23. Vinson Desk Chair

This small wooden armchair was once a beloved fixture of Vinson’s Drug Store in downtown Rockville, on Montgomery Avenue diagonally across from the Red Brick Courthouse. As the favorite chair of Robert William “Doc” Vinson (1872-1958), it received both great wear and loving attention, with its parts – tablet crest rail, back spindles, saddle seat, and turned legs and stretchers – braced, wired, glued, and nailed into place.

In 1957, the Montgomery County Sentinel described it as “perhaps the most used piece [in the drug store], an old spoke-back chair, reinforced by wire. Under the occupant’s right leg is a scooped out place made by Doc’s left shoe. He hikes up his left leg and tucks it under the right leg for comfort. This would seem like a difficult exercise for a man as old as Doc [then 85], but he performs it still with ease.”

Son of a Rockville judge, Doc Vinson started working at the pharmacy in 1900, and by 1911 he had purchased both the business and the building. He was notorious for neither updating his décor nor cleaning out old stock. As a result, after the store closed on his death in 1958, many interesting artifacts found their way to the collections.

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