PRESIDENTIAL SEAT CUSHION

Eighteen presidents have served the College, but only after they retire do they attain a true seat of power at the president's mansion. Sixteen custom seat cushions adorn the chairs used in the dining room there, each representing a past president. (Jim Kim’s is currently in the works.) The cushion of Bennet Tyler, president from 1822 to 1828, symbolically depicts (clockwise from upper left quadrant) his discontinuation of daily chapel, his four years in the red and two in the black, the admission of the College’s first black student and an increase in the number of professorships during the Tyler administration. The cushions originated in 1958, thanks to an idea from College designer John Scotford ’38, needlework by descendants of John Sloan Dickey ’29, among others, and chairs crafted in the student woodworking shop. Scotford also designed the Dartmouth