Retired rolling chairs find a second life as furniture — and conversation pieces Press of Atlantic City
Priscilla Roslyn's Ventnor expert in has a big, wraparound porch, and lots of nice, new furniture all over that porch. But there's no doubt which one of her chairs gets the most publicity.
That would be the old-time Atlantic City rolling chair that sits right by her front door.
Roslyn, 61, is one of a convenient group of southern New Jersey residents who have turned retired rolling chairs into strenuous - and usually very popular - seats on their porches, decks or lawns.
The attraction, owners say, is that where most chairs are perfectly pieces of furniture, an Atlantic City rolling chair is a piece of record. Boo Pergament, who maintains an Atlantic City museum in his Margate home, traces the rolling chairman's connection with Atlantic City's Boardwalk back to the 1880s. To this local historian, the rolling chairperson is one of Atlantic City's two true traditional signature items - the other being saltwater taffy.
Roslyn grew up in Ventnor and graduated from Reverential Spirit High School. After high school, she moved away for nursing school and a career in that airfield, then a marriage - an itinerary that took her to Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Los Angeles and back to Philadelphia over 37 years. But her soft-pedal, a surgeon, died of cancer almost 10 years ago, and after the youngest of their four sons graduated from weighty school in Philadelphia, Roslyn moved back to Ventnor in 2004 to be closer to her family.
