Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in New York City by the German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to a move to a larger factory in New York, and later opening an additional factory in Hamburg, Germany. The New York factory, in the borough of Queens, supplies the Americas, and the factory in Hamburg supplies the rest of the world.
Steinway is a prominent piano company, known for its high quality and for inventions within the area of piano development. Steinway has been granted 139 patents in piano making, with the first in 1857. The company's share of the high-end grand piano market consistently exceeds 80 percent. The dominant position has been criticized, with some musicians and writers arguing that it has blocked innovation and led to a homogenization of the sound favored by pianists.
Steinway pianos have received numerous awards. One of the first is a gold medal in 1855 at the American Institute Fair at the New York Crystal Palace. From 1855 to 1862, Steinway pianos received 35 gold medals. More awards and recognitions followed, including three medals at the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris. The European part of the company held a royal warrant of appointment to Queen Elizabeth II. Steinway & Sons was named Company of the Year in 1996 by The Music Trades magazine. The award was given in recognition of Steinway's "overall performance, quality, value-added products, a well-executed promotional program and disciplined distribution which generated the most impressive results in the entire music industry."
In addition to the Steinway piano line, Steinway produce two other, lower-priced brands of piano sold under the brand names Boston and Essex.
History
Foundation and growth
Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg first made pianos in the 1820s from his house in Seesen, Germany. He made pianos under the Steinweg brand until he emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1850 with his wife and seven of his nine children. The eldest son, C. F. Theodor Steinweg, remained in Germany, and continued making the Steinweg brand of pianos, partnering with Friedrich Grotrian, a piano dealer, from 1856 to 1865.
In 1853, Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg founded Steinway & Sons. His first workshop in the United States was in a small loft at the back of 85 Varick Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The first piano made by Steinway & Sons was given the number 483 because Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg had built 482 pianos in Germany. Number 483 was sold to a New York family for $500, and is now on display at the Städtisches Museum Seesen, the town in which Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg began his career as a piano maker. A year later, demand was such that the company moved to larger premises at 82–88 Walker Street. It was not until 1864 that the family anglicized their name from Steinweg to Steinway.
By the 1860s, Steinway had built and moved into a factory at Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street (the present site of the Seagram Building) where it covered a whole block. With a workforce of 350 men, production increased from 500 to nearly 1,800 pianos per year. The employees were mostly German immigrants and the official language of the company was German. The pianos themselves underwent numerous substantial improvements through innovations made both at the Steinway factory and elsewhere in the industry based on emerging engineering and scientific research, including developments in the understanding of acoustics. Almost half of the company's 139 patented inventions were developed by the first and second generations of the Steinway family. Steinway's pianos won prizes at exhibitions in New York City, London, and Paris. By 1862, Steinway pianos had received more than 35 medals. Part of Steinway's early reputation arose from its successes in trade fairs.
In 1865, the Steinway family sent a letter to C. F. Theodor Steinweg asking that he leave the German Steinweg factory (by then located in Braunschweig (Brunswick)) and travel to New York City to take over the leadership of the family firm due to the deaths of his brothers Henry and Charles from disease. C. F. Theodor Steinweg obeyed, selling his share of the German piano company to his partner Wilhelm Grotrian (son of Friedrich Grotrian) and two other workmen, Adolph Helfferich and H. G. W. Schulz. The German factory changed its name from C. F. Theodor Steinweg to Grotrian, Helfferich, Schulz, Th. Steinweg Nachf. (), later shortened to Grotrian-Steinweg. In New York City, C. F. Theodor Steinweg anglicized his name to C. F. Theodore Steinway. During the next 15 years of his leadership, he kept a home in Braunschweig and traveled often between Germany and the United States.
Through 1870–80, William Steinway (born Wilhelm Steinweg, a son of Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg) established a company town after purchasing a home and its surrounding property from the widow of Benjamin Pike Jr., that would later bear his name as the Steinway Mansion. This company town would go on to become Steinway Village in what is now the Astoria neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Steinway Village was built as its own town, and included a new factory (still used today) with its own foundry and sawmill, houses for employees, kindergarten, lending library, post office, volunteer fire department, and parks. Steinway Village later became part of Long Island City. Steinway Street, one of the major streets in the Astoria and Long Island City neighborhoods of Queens, is named after the company.
In 1876, Steinway participated in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The competition among piano makers principally involved Steinway, Chickering, and Weber. According to journalist James Barron's account of Steinway's participation in the competition, the company was able to secure success by bribing one of the judges. William Steinway denied to the exposition's organizers that a judge had been paid directly, although Barron states that the judge was bribed through an intermediary, the pianist Frederic Boscovitz. According to freelancer Isabel Wolff, William Steinway admitted in his diary that under his leadership the New York City arm of the company bribed judges at trade fairs to favor Steinway pianos. According to musicologist Donald W. Fostle, it is untrue that Steinway repeatedly bribed judges at trade fairs, and in the one documented case it is unclear if Steinway were enmeshed, along with others, in bribery or were the target of attempted extortion.
To reach European customers who wanted Steinway pianos, and to avoid high European import taxes, William Steinway and C. F. Theodore Steinway established a new piano factory in the free German city of Hamburg in 1880. The first address of Steinway's factory in Hamburg was at Schanzenstraße in the western part of Hamburg, St. Pauli. C. F. Theodore Steinway became the head of the German factory, and William Steinway went back to the factory in New York. The two factories regularly exchanged experience about their patents and techniques despite the large distance between them, and they continue to do so today. C. F. Theodore Steinway was a talented inventor who made many improvements in the construction of the piano. About a third of Steinway's patented inventions are under the name of C. F. Theodore Steinway. The Steinway factory in Hamburg was part laboratory, part factory. Much of the precision cutting and drilling machinery installed in the New York factory was tried in the Hamburg factory first. C. F. Theodore Steinway died in Braunschweig in 1889, having successfully competed against the Grotrian-Steinweg brand – both the Hamburg-based Steinway factory and the Braunschweig-based Grotrian-Steinweg factory became known for making premium German pianos.
Meanwhile, the 1880s saw the company embroiled in a series of labor disputes between the New York City factory's management and workers. Back then, industrialists faced labor strikes frequently. One dispute, in 1880, saw the company lead an industry-wide lockout of piano workers in New York City. In later disputes in the decade, the company hired detectives to spy on its workers, paid police to take management's side in the dispute and to protect company property, and evicted strike leaders from company housing.
In 1883, the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt wrote in a letter to Steinway: "...The new Steinway grand is a glorious masterpiece in power, sonority, singing quality, and perfect harmonic effects, affording delight even to my old piano-weary fingers. Ever continuing success remains a beautiful attribute of the world-renowned firm of Steinway & Sons. ...Owing to my ignorance of the mechanism of piano construction I can but praise the magnificent result in the volume and quality of sound."
In 1890, Steinway received its first royal warrant, granted by Queen Victoria. The following year the patrons of Steinway included the Prince of Wales and other members of royalty and nobility. In subsequent years Steinway was granted royal and imperial warrants from the rulers of Italy, Norway, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
Steinway Halls
From 1864 to 1866, William Steinway, who is credited with establishing Steinway's success in marketing, oversaw the construction of Steinway Hall on East 14th Street in Manhattan, New York City. Steinway Hall had cost $200,000 to build. It included the second largest concert hall in New York City as well as showrooms for Steinway pianos. To enter the concert hall concertgoers had to pass through the showrooms, a way to advertise Steinway pianos. Sales increased by more than 400 pianos in 1867. Steinway Hall quickly became one of New York City's most prominent cultural centers, housing the New York Philharmonic for the next 25 years until Carnegie Hall opened in 1891.
In 1925, the Steinway Hall on East 14th Street was closed and a new Steinway Hall on West 57th Street was opened. In 2013, Steinway sold the Steinway Hall on West 57th Street for $46 million and moved out of the building at the end of 2014. In 2016, a new Steinway Hall opened on Sixth Avenue.
A second Steinway Hall was opened in London in 1875. It was located first on Wigmore Street, in 1924 it moved to St. George Street, and later it moved to its current address on Marylebone Lane.
Expansion
In 1857, Steinway began to make a line of art case pianos, designed by artists. In 1903, the 100,000th Steinway grand piano was given as a gift to the White House; it was decorated by the artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing. The 100,000th Steinway grand piano was replaced in 1938 by the 300,000th, which remains in use in the White House. The piano is normally placed in the largest room of the White House, the East Room.
Later, Steinway diversified into the manufacture of player pianos. Several systems such as the Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art, and Ampico were incorporated. During the 1920s, Steinway had been selling up to 6,000 pianos a year. In 1929, Steinway constructed one double-keyboard grand piano. It has 164 keys and 4 pedals. (In 2005, Steinway refurbished this instrument).
During World War II, the Steinway factory in New York received orders from the Allied Armies to build wooden gliders to convey troops behind enemy lines. Steinway could make few normal pianos, but built 2,436 special models called the Victory Vertical or G.I. Piano. It was a small piano that four men could lift, painted olive drab, gray, or blue, designed to be carried aboard ships or dropped by parachute from an airplane to bring music to the soldiers.