effect on sales, increasing demand for new pianos by four hundred in 1867 alone.
William Steinway also established the ‘Concert & Artist’ department which is still in
operation today. The Steinway factory was then located on 4th Avenue (now Park
Avenue) and East 55th Street in Manhattan.
In 1880 William Steinway established a professional community, Steinway Village, in
the Astoria section of Queens County, New York. The Steinway Village was built as its
own town, which included a new factory, which is still used today, with its own foundries,
post office, parks and housing for employees. Steinway Village later became part of
Long Island City. To reach European customers who wanted Steinway brand pianos and
to avoid high European taxes, William and Theodore established a new piano factory in
the free German city of Hamburg in 1880. Also in 1880 the ‘Steinway-Haus’ was
established in Hamburg. In 1909 another ‘Steinway-Haus’ opened in Berlin. In the
1990s Steinway had established itself in New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg.
In 1900 both Steinway factories produced more than 3,500 pianos a year which found
their place in concert halls, schools and homes throughout the world. In 1857 Steinway
began to produce a line of highly lucrative art case pianos, designed by well known artists,
which became popular among the rich and famous. In the 1900s Steinway started to
diversify into the manufacture of reproducing pianos in association with Welte-Mignon,
Duo-Art and Ampico. During the 1920s Steinway sold up to 6,000 pianos a year but
piano production went down after the Crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression
Steinway produced just over 1,000 pianos a year. In the years between 1939 and World
War II demand rose again.
During World War II the Steinway factory in New York built wooden gliders to convey
troops behind enemy lines. The factory in Hamburg, Germany, being American-owned,
made very few pianos and no more than a hundred a year left the factory. In the later
years of the war the Hamburg factory was ordered to give away all the prepared and dried
wood from the lumber yard for war production. In an air raid over Hamburg the factory
was hit by several Allied bombs and was nearly destroyed.
Steinway completed restoration of the Hamburg factory with some help from the
Marshall Plan. Eventually the post-war cultural revival boosted the demand for
entertainment and Steinway increased piano production at both New York and Hamburg
factories from 2,000 in 1947 to 4,000 pianos a year by the 1960s. During the Cold War
years Steinway remained one of the very few products of the Free World purchased by
the Soviet Union, and Steinway pianos were at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory, St Petersburg Conservatory and the St
Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Leningrad, and other schools and symphony
orchestras in the Soviet Union.
In 1972 legal issues concerning the Grotrian-Steinweg brand were resolved, and a lack of
interest in the Steinway business among some of the Steinway family led to the firm
being sold to CBS who in 1985 sold it to a group of investors, Steinway Musical
Properties Inc. In 1998 Steinway & Sons made their 500,000th piano which was built by