Abstract
This chapter examines how nineteenth-century American interiors—especially theaters and railroad cars—materialized and enforced racial hierarchy through the design, arrangement, and regulation of seating. It opens with the case of Sara Parker Remond’s forcible removal from reserved opera seats at Boston’s Howard Athenaeum, demonstrating how theater managers used seating categories to deny Black patrons access to the social legitimacy, comfort, and visibility associated with middle-class respectability. The emergence of the opera chair as a protected zone for white femininity contrasted with the persistent relegation of Black audience members to the third-tier gallery, whose benches, inferior access, and lack of amenities signaled civic marginality. Likewise, the standardized two-person bench seats in railway cars enabled conductors to police racial proximity and justify the creation of Jim Crow cars, while the ambiguous category of the “ladies’ car” excluded Black women from the protections granted to white women. Through legal challenges, strategic ticket purchases, and public resistance, Black activists exposed the contradictions between democratic claims of equal access and the racialized interior architectures that structured public life. The chapter argues that interior seating was not merely functional, but a powerful instrument for producing and maintaining racial meaning—encoding who could belong, who could move freely, and who could claim comfort, dignity, and citizenship within shared public space.