Grand Rapids used to be the furniture capital of the world - our history is pretty extensive in pre-1900 furniture. I was thinking that if I could figure out the mfg, it might be possible to find old records here as to what kind of seating they made - train station or stadium, for instance.
I've poked around quite a bit on this this morning (mainly as a procrastination and diversion from studying), and I haven't come up with a thing. I can't figure out what either SF or CF might mean from 1886. The only thing similar is Sligh, and they were only in bedroom furniture at that time. List of GR Furniture companies - very comprehensive and covers this time period:
http://www.fm4furniture.org/michyes.htm
I also tried to find a patent to see who invented it (thinking it might lead me to the mfg name), but that is needle in a haystack. Patents that old are only searchable by a few fields like date and classification. Nothing on 4/18/86 and I also tried much broader ranges of years using classifications 297/324 and 297/323 but you have to click on every single search return item - no descriptions in the list. (It's uspto.gov, if anyone is interested in looking. Click Patent Search, then Advanced, and use the syntax given in the field codes - it's fairly straightforward.)
I did get to look at several dozen really cool images like this one though:
http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=...RS=CCL/297/323
I don't have time to do the library research thing, so I am at a dead end for now (and have procrastinated long enough). Still, it was a pleasant diversion. In the process, I stumbled across other sites that I will spend time on when I have more time in August, such as this one that includes some furniture factory photos:
http://www.historygrandrapids.org/
I guess that my parting shots on this would be to wonder if a seat that nice - looks ornate and expensive for the time - would have been used in an outdoor setting when so much of it is wood. Doesn't it seem like baseball stadium seating would have been more plank and bleacher style back then, until they came up with wood protection/preservation coatings? Just thinking out loud here. I'm voting for an indoor use, which excludes baseball.
I enjoyed looking into this one, though. A well-spent hour!
J