Commemoration of the Opening of the New Steinway Pianos Building

Event Information

Venue(s):
Steinway Pianos Store and Factory

Event Type:
Chamber (includes Solo)

Performance Forces:
Instrumental

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
6 August 2020

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

09 May 1864

Program Details



No time given.

Performers and/or Works Performed

Citations

1)
Review: New-York Times, 11 May 1864, 4.

“The Messrs. Steinway, who yesterday commemorated the opening of an additional wing to their factory, and of a new and magnificent marble wareroom in East Fourteenth-street, are now the largest pianoforte makers in the world.  They employ many hundred hands, and use all the labor-saving machinery that has yet been discovered by themselves or others, to expedite the various processes. Their factory, six stories high, comprises an entire block, facing Fourth-avenue, and running down to Fifty-second and Fifty-third-streets, so as to form three sides of a square. Through the various departments a number of invited guests were yesterday conducted, and their surprise and gratification were unbounded…

            There were, the active duties at the feat being through, good things said by Messrs. Watson, Willis, Morford, Du Salle, Mills, Ryan and Jones, and splendid playing on the “grand” by Messrs. Mills, Sanderson, Groesbeck and Wood. The response of the younger Steinway to the many kind references to the firm, its enterprise and its deserved success, was in the best of taste, and conveyed in it the prophecy that ere long the land of their adoption would be the acknowledged land of music and of song. Certainly the Steinways are contributing to that consummation
2)
Review: Musical Review and World, 21 May 1864, 168.
“The opening of the new warerooms of Messrs. Steinway & Sons, as well as of a new wing attached to their factory, was duly celebrated last week by a great number of the members of the Press, and our leading artists.  The event is in so far an important one as it shows the undiminished success, industry and energy of this firm.  Any one who goes through the magnificent buildings (whether factory or warerooms) will at once acknowledge that it is a business of the first magnitude.  It is undoubtedly the largest in the world, and what is still more honorable, it is conducted with a full knowledge of the requirements such business demands.  All this is very creditable to the Steinways but also the country in which their success was obtained; for as Mr. Wm. Steinway justly remarked, all the members of the firm had the same knowledge, energy and ambition in Germany, yet with all their might they could not make more than sixty pianos in a year, while the immense resources of this country, the leading spirit of the nation, have enabled them to make over forty pianofortes in a week.  Thus we see, it was the right field for the right men which produced this result, one in which all musical men and especially all competitors should rejoice, as it shows them the way how to reach the same end.”