Steinways

Writers of human interest articles for the musical press, last week, had an assignment that warmed their cockles like Chianti. Steinway hall was being abandoned. After 59 years of brave nights, this place, where Charles Dickens, in a shaky voice, read from his notes; where Fritz Kreisler, a shaggy boy of 13, made his Manhattan debut; where sang Christine Nilsson, the Swedish Nightingale; this place of tarnished gilt and outworn elegance, smelling of twilight, was to be left to the bludgeonings of the real-estate auctioneer. The inextinguishable appeal of extinguished gallantry wrung the hearts of the human interest writers who briefly noted the fact that Steinway & Sons, famed piano manufacturers, were to move from the old place to a new building* uptown.

Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, born in the village of Wolfshaven in 1797, was, with his brothers, a mountain guide. His country was devastated by Napoleon, then by the insurgent Prussians. His three brothers were killed on a mountain peak by a lightning bolt. Heinrich Steinweg joined the troops of the Duke of Brunswick. He played the bugle. In his knapsack, he carried a jewsharp-- an instrument which he found inadequate. He evolved a dulcimer. It was played by striking the strings with little hammers.

After the war, he began to make cabinets, church organs. At his wedding, he played his own wedding march while his fiancee sweated at the bellows, until it was time to climb down from the loft and stand in front of the priest. For a wedding present he gave the girl a piano--a curious instrument with two strings. His son made one with three. In 1839, a piano of his making was exhibited at the state fair in Brunswick.

Heinrich Steinweg had a long brown beard that lay on his chest like a cloud guarding a secret. His son, Charles, also had a beard, but he was a wild, moonlighting fellow, and the end of it was that he had to flee the country. His choice left him free to write a letter home in which he described glowingly the country he had reached. His father, mother, six assorted brothers, sisters, set out to reach his side. When Henry Clay was making a vain but practised compromise with Death, and John Calhoun had roared his last, Peter Cooper, builder of the first U. S. locomotive, had a Steinway piano.

Came Henry, an inventor, who got the tin-can sound out of his grandfather's perfected dulcimer; Theodore, a mechanic, who standardized construction. Business moved uptown, from a barn to an office building. William, an organizer, headed the house of Steinway. He built Steinway Hall, which, last week, became a subject for the writers of human interest articles.

Another Charles, a Frederick, a Theodore. The control has never left the family. They have made about 200,000 pianos. Now the President is another Frederick. Benignly bearded, he patronizes the Arts, plays golf, greets with a grave good morning his respectful employes.

*The Steinway Building.