This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Is there any piece of furniture more classically American than the La-Z-Boy recliner? It goes hand in hand with the image of Dad -- any Dad, all Dads, from the 1950s to today -- enjoying the simple pleasure of sitting with his feet up and his head back, tempting sleep as he reads the paper. After a long day at work but before the wife puts a delicious roast on the table, there's always time to relax a bit in the world's most famous comfy chair.

La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB) invented the first version of that iconic chair in 1929. The company got its start a few years earlier when two cousins, Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker, founded the Kna-Shoe Manufacturing Co. in Monroe, Michigan. They made furniture and cabinets in the proverbial start-up garage, and they has some initial success, especially with new designs like the Gossiper, a bench with a phone stand built in. But competitors kept stealing their designs and their profits. So when someone suggested that they upholster their popular wooden recliner, they proceeded carefully, filing for patents and choosing a distinctive name. Sit-N-Snooze and Slack-Back were in the running, but La-Z-Boy was the name they finally selected for the world's first reclining upholstered chair.

The La-Z-Boy was a huge hit, although it hadn't yet achieved its truly classic form. That occurred in 1953, when the Otto-Matic model was introduced. The long-running problem of the ottoman, a separate piece of furniture needed to support the feet while relaxing in a comfy chair, had now been solved. From now on, the ottoman was rendered superfluous, since the La-Z-Boy could offer a built-in foot rest. Oh, sweet perfection!

But could even perfection be improved upon? Of course! Even though Dad could now relax with his feet supported as he leaned back and gazed blissfully at the ceiling, what if he wanted to rock? The folks in Monroe took care of that little problem in 1962 with the Reclina-Rocker, known internally at La-Z-Boy as "the miracle of chairs." This chair was another big hit, and helped boost sales 50-fold during the 1960s.

Despite these wondrous developments, La-Z-Boy retains a certain simplicity, and you could even say homeliness. Although the chairs are certainly comfortable, they are also famous for their ugly fabrics (think brown and fuzzy) and sometimes over-the-top features (think built-in beer cooler). I suspect that this has a lot to do with the company's Midwestern roots. A company based in a small town located between Toledo and Detroit probably isn't going to generate the world's most sophisticated designs.

At the same time, La-Z-Boy has long been a great example of the plain, Midwestern values of simplicity, honesty, and low-key innovation. When the founding cousins opened their first retail store in Monroe, on a former cornfield on Telegraph Road, they hired circus performers to entertain the children of prospective customers. That down-home sensibility helped the company grow and eventually go public in 1972.

Like much of the industrial Midwest, though, La-Z-Boy and Monroe have faced tough times lately. Most chair production has been moved to low-wage locations in the American south and Mexico. But the iconic chair lives on, and now offers an even wider range of options. In addition to sitting, reclining, and rocking, Dad can now chill his beer and make phone calls all from his La-Z-Boy chair. Let's all take a moment to salute American inventive genius at its most comfortable.

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