The city of High Point in North Carolina, in the United States, is home to two gigantic chest of drawers. The two colossal monuments were put up in celebration of the city’s reputation as the “Furniture Capital of the World” – a title the city has earned for being the major furniture manufacturing hub of the country for more than a century.
The original Big Bureau was built in the 1920s by the High Point Chamber of Commerce. The bureau was a straightforward chest of drawers, twenty feet high, with lovely floral decoration on the drawer fronts and a sign on top built to resemble a mirror. In 1951, the bureau building was sold to High Point Jaycees, a humanitarian organization, and is currently their office which is located behind the chest. In 1996, the building was completely renovated and converted into a 38-foot tall Goddard-Townsend block front chest, complete with a six foot tall pair of socks hanging out of one drawer - a tribute to High Point's hosiery manufacturing industry.
In 1999, a furniture company - Furnitureland South, put up an even bigger chest of drawers, 85 feet in height and more than twice the height of the Big Bureau. Made of foam, the Highboy is not a freestanding structure; just an elaborate storefront.
Sources: Roadside America / Furnitureland South / Highpoint Museum
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