William Steinway

William Steinway, also known as Wilhelm Steinway (born Wilhelm Steinweg, son of Steinway & Sons founder Henry E. Steinway, was a businessman and civic leader who was influential in the development of Astoria, New York.

Steinway was born in Seesen, Brunswick, the fourth son of Henry Engelhard Steinway. In Germany, he received an elementary education and was also given instruction in languages and music. He then became an apprentice in a piano factory, where he spent two years.

He came to the United States with his father and brothers in 1850. With his father and his brothers Charles and Henry, he founded the firm of Steinway & Sons in 1853. In 1876, he became the official head of the firm, after he had done the decisions factually since 1871 when his father died, and in regard of representation since 1860 when he was the speaker to inaugurate the new plant at 4th Ave./52th Street. In 1866, Steinway erected Steinway Hall to make a place for the exhibition of the highest musical skill. It was a huge success for the company. He also founded the Steinway Concert & Artist department, which is still working today.

In 1870, William began building a company town, Steinway Village, on 400 acres (1.6 km2) in northern Astoria, New York. Avoiding the crowded streets and labor problems associated with operating in Manhattan, he directed the construction of the Steinway Piano Factory on this land, a large facility still in operation today. Near the factory was housing for his workers, a church, library and kindergarten as well as a public trolley line. In 1929, a resort area which Steinway developed just east of Astoria, in North Beach, was converted into North Beach Airport, later renamed LaGuardia Airport.

His successor in the company was Charles Herman Steinway (de).

It was recently revealed, when nine volumes of Steinway's personal diaries, covering 35 years, were made public on-line by The Smithsonian Institution, that he was devastated by his wife's adultery. Steinway married Regina Roos in Buffalo, New York in April 1861. He was 26 and she 17 and the couple were deeply in love. The marriage lasted 16 years and included a series of affairs which Steinway found personally devastating. Regina was to become pregnant six times – two children were still-born and a third miscarried. One son was illegitimate and moved with his mother to France when she divorced in 1876. Steinway later happily remarried.

William Steinway and Gottlieb Daimler were both driven by the desire to produce the very best in their respective fields and by the time they met in 1888, both had established companies with growing reputations for providing, respectively, the most finely crafted pianos and the best engineered cars.

The Steinway family had emigrated to the USA in 1850 and the quality of their instruments had rapidly made Steinway the brand of choice for professionals and, with the country's increasing numbers of wealthy entrepreneurs, a Steinway piano was to be found in many a well-heeled amateur's sitting room. Similarly, Daimler's Mercedes cars had become increasing sought after by discerning motorists in Europe, but Daimler knew that they had potential markets in many other countries around the world and, from very early on, was looking far beyond the European borders.

Both men understood the importance of the American market – one from within the USA, the other from outside – but it was not long before the meeting between the two would result in a unique enterprise. As early as 1876, the gifted designer and Daimler confidant Wilhelm Maybach had come to know William Steinway. During a stay in Germany in 1888, Steinway also made the acquaintance of Gottlieb Daimler and their conversations would invariably revolve around one subject: production of Daimler engines in America. Steinway, like Daimler, quite rightly believed these was a bright future for the internal combustion engine and automobile.

After William Steinway returned to America, plans quickly materialized. On September 29, 1888, Daimler Motor Company of New York was founded and initially produced gas and petroleum engines for stationary and marine applications. The two entrepreneurs also started seriously considering the production of automobiles in America, as "old-world" automobiles were highly coveted there, but they were expensive due to shipping costs and customs duties. From 1892 until ca. 1896/97 the "American Daimler" was produced in the premises of the Steinway Astoria plant, full copies of the German cars.

Following Steinway's early death in 1896, his heirs weren't convinced about the project and sold all their shares to the General Electric Company in 1898. The factory was renamed Daimler Manufacturing Company.

Today, the hand polished wood inside the Daimler AG company's luxury top brand cars named Maybach is made by Steinway's factory in Hamburg, Germany.

During the 1890s, Steinway began a project to extend his company town's horse-drawn trolley line under the East River and into midtown Manhattan. This project would eventually lead to the IRT Flushing Line. Although he died before the completion of the project, the tunnels that were dug under the East River were named the Steinway Tunnels after him. The dirt removed from the tunnels was formed into a small island in the middle of the East River, now called U Thant Island. Steinway served as head of the New York Subway Commission, the group that planned the New York City Subway network.

William Steinway died on November 30, 1896, and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery. Main Street in Astoria has been renamed Steinway Street in his honor, and today a station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line (E, ​M, and ​R trains) is named Steinway Street.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History launched an online edition of “The William Steinway Diary” in December 2010 to coincide with a special display of the diary. The exhibition, titled, “A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861–1896,” was on view in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery from Dec. 17, 2010 through April 8, 2011. In the diaries, Steinway documented more than 36 years of his life through near-daily notes in nine volumes and some 2,500 pages, beginning eight days after the first shots of the Civil War were fired and three days before his wedding. The exhibition of the diary included select diary passages, Steinway family photographs, maps and advertisements, and documentation of his role in the creation of the New York City subway and the company town of Steinway in Queens, N.Y.

Recognizing the diary’s historical significance, the late Henry Ziegler Steinway, Steinway’s grandson and former president of Steinway & Sons, donated the diary to the museum in 1996. A complete transcription of the diary alongside high-resolution scans of each handwritten page are available on “The William Steinway Diary” website from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The site provides a detailed look at Steinway’s firsthand account of the period’s financial panics, labor unrest and rise of the German immigrant class. Primary source material is contextualized with more than 100 images from Steinway family archives and related essays.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William Steinway (born Wilhelm Steinweg) William Steinway - cabinet card photo.jpg William Steinway Born March 5, 1835 Seesen, Duchy of Brunswick Died November 30, 1896 (aged 61) New York City, United States Other names Wilhelm Steinway Known for Establishing the success in marketing of the company Steinway & Sons

William Steinway, also Wilhelm Steinway, born Wilhelm Steinweg (March 5, 1835 – November 30, 1896), son of Steinway & Sons founder Henry E. Steinway, was a businessman and civic leader who was influential in the development of Astoria, New York.

Contents

   1 Germany

   2 Steinway & Sons

   3 Marriage

   4 Mercedes cars

   5 Public Transit

   6 Legacy

   7 See also

   8 References

   9 External links

Germany

Steinway was born in Seesen, Brunswick, the fourth son of Henry Engelhard Steinway. In Germany, he received an elementary education, and was also given instruction in languages and music. He then became an apprentice in a piano factory, where he spent two years.[1] Steinway & Sons The rotunda of the Steinway Hall on 57th Str. in New York City with artist Mia LaBerge's Madison Bluestone art case piano in the foreground

He came to the United States with his father and brothers in 1850. With his father and his brothers Charles and Henry, he founded the firm of Steinway & Sons in 1853. In 1889, he became the head of the firm. In 1866, Steinway erected Steinway Hall to make a place for the exhibition of the highest musical skill.[1] It was a huge success for the company. He also founded the Steinway Concert & Artist department, which is still working today.

In 1870 William began building a company town, Steinway Village, on 400 acres (1.6 km2) in northern Astoria, New York. Avoiding the crowded streets and labor problems associated with operating in Manhattan, he directed the construction of the Steinway Piano Factory on this land, a large facility still in operation today. Near the factory was housing for his workers, a church, library and kindergarten as well as a public trolley line. In 1929, a resort area which Steinway developed just east of Astoria, in North Beach, was converted into North Beach Airport, later renamed LaGuardia Airport.

His successor in the company was Charles Herman Steinway Marriage

It was recently revealed, when nine volumes of Steinway's personal diaries, covering 35 years, were made public on-line by The Smithsonian Institution, that he was devastated by his wife's adultery. Steinway married Regina Roos in Buffalo, New York in April 1861. He was 26 and she 17 and the couple were deeply in love. The marriage lasted 16 years and included a series of affairs which Steinway found personally devastating. Regina was to become pregnant six times – two children were still-born and a third miscarried. One son was illegitimate and moved with his mother to France when she divorced in 1876. Steinway later happily re-married.[2] Mercedes cars

William Steinway and Gottlieb Daimler were both driven by the desire to produce the very best in their respective fields and by the time they met in 1888, both had established companies with growing reputations for providing, respectively, the most finely crafted pianos and the best engineered cars.[3]

The Steinway family had emigrated to the USA in 1850 and the quality of their instruments had rapidly made Steinway the brand of choice for professionals and, with the country's increasing numbers of wealthy entrepreneurs, a Steinway piano was to be found in many a well-heeled amateur's sitting room.[3] Similarly, Daimler's Mercedes cars had become increasing sought after by discerning motorists in Europe, but Daimler knew that they had potential markets in many other countries around the world and, from very early on, was looking far beyond the European borders.

Both men understood the importance of the American market – one from within the USA, the other from outside – but it was not long before the meeting between the two would result in a unique enterprise. As early as 1876, the gifted designer and Daimler confidant Wilhelm Maybach had come to know William Steinway. During a stay in Germany in 1888, Steinway also made the acquaintance of Gottlieb Daimler and their conversations would invariably revolve around one subject: production of Daimler engines in America. Steinway, like Daimler, quite rightly believed these was a bright future for the internal combustion engine and automobile.

After William Steinway returned to America, plans quickly materialized. On September 29, 1888, Daimler Motor Co, New York, was founded and initially produced gas and petroleum engines for stationary and marine applications. The two entrepreneurs also started seriously considering the production of automobiles in America, as "old-world" automobiles were highly coveted there, but they were expensive due to shipping costs and customs duties.

Following Steinway's early death in 1896, his heirs weren't convinced about the project and sold all their shares to the General Electric Company in 1898. The factory was renamed Daimler Manufacturing Company.

Today, the hand polished wood inside the Daimler AG company's luxury top brand cars named Maybach is made by Steinway's factory in Hamburg, Germany.[4] Public Transit Steinway Street Station

During the 1890s, Steinway began a project to extend his company town's horse-drawn trolley line under the East River and into midtown Manhattan. This project would eventually lead to the IRT Flushing Line. Although he died before the completion of the project, the tunnels that were dug under the East River were named the Steinway Tunnels after him. The dirt removed from the tunnels was formed into a small island in the middle of the East River, now called U Thant Island. Steinway served as head of the New York Subway Commission, the group that planned the New York City Subway network. Legacy

William Steinway died on November 30, 1896,[5] and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery. Main Street in Astoria has been renamed Steinway Street in his honor, and today a station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line (E M R trains) is named Steinway Street.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History launched an online edition of “The William Steinway Diary” in December 2010 to coincide with a special display of the diary. The exhibition, titled, “A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861–1896,” was on view in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery from Dec. 17, 2010 through April 8, 2011. In the diaries, Steinway documented more than 36 years of his life through near-daily notes in nine volumes and some 2,500 pages, beginning eight days after the first shots of the Civil War were fired and three days before his wedding. The exhibition of the diary included select diary passages, Steinway family photographs, maps and advertisements, and documentation of his role in the creation of the New York City subway and the company town of Steinway in Queens, N.Y.

Recognizing the diary’s historical significance, the late Henry Ziegler Steinway, Steinway’s grandson and former president of Steinway & Sons, donated the diary to the museum in 1996. A complete transcription of the diary alongside high-resolution scans of each handwritten page are available on “The William Steinway Diary” website from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The site provides a detailed look at Steinway’s firsthand account of the period’s financial panics, labor unrest and rise of the German immigrant class. Primary source material is contextualized with more than 100 images from Steinway family archives and related essays.[6] See also

   Steinway Mansion

References

   Wikisource-logo.svg Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1900). "Steinway, William". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.

   Allen-Mills, Toby. (2010), "Wife's Grand Betrayal of Steinway" in Sunday Times 26 December 2010.

   Steinway & Sons – Owners' Magazine, 2009, p. 95.

   "Top Gear - Maybach 62.wmv" on YouTube[dead link]. January 17, 2010.

   Find A Grave

   "A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861–1896". National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 24 April 2012.

External links Find more about William Steinway at Wikipedia's sister projects Search Commons Media from Commons Search Wikisource Source texts from Wikisource

   Official website of Steinway's factory in New York City

   Official website of Steinway's factory in Hamburg (German)

   The Steinway & Sons Collection in La Guardia and Wagner Archives[dead link]

   (see also the section Steinway & Sons in the article La Guardia and Wagner Archives)

   Greater Astoria Historical Society bio on Steinway

   (see also the article Greater Astoria Historical Society)

   Forbes Magazine article on Steinway at the Wayback Machine (archived October 12, 2008)[dead link]

   William Steinway Diary Web site – National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

   A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861–1896 Online exhibition from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

   Steinway & Sons Collection, 1853-1997 finding aid for the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries

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William Steinway print this page

William Steinway (originally Wilhelm Steinweg) was born in Seesen, Germany, on March 5, 1835, the fourth son and sixth child of Heinrich (later Henry) and Julianne Steinweg. Heinrich was a maker of pianos in Seesen, where he had lived since 1820. Three more children were born to the family, one of whom died young.

The children had a normal Protestant rearing in a small German town which, fortunately for them, had a remarkably good school, the Jacobsohn Institute, to which they all went. Among other things, William learned English in this school, which was important for him later.

In 1848 when a number of revolutions were going on in Europe, the third son, Charles (Carl) left Germany for New York in order to avoid the requirement of joining the army. He and others of the sons had learned something of piano making from their father, and Charles wrote back to the family that a good living could be made in New York piano factories. In May, 1850, Heinrich packed up his family, except the eldest son, C. F. Theodore, and sailed to New York, landing in June.

The males of the family went out and got jobs in piano manufactories, William among them. He worked for the William Nunns Company, where he learned to make soundboards, but the Nunns company failed in a few years, and William was denied salary he had earned.

The Steinwegs were ambitious, and they decided to found their own company as a partnership in 1853, Anglicizing the name to Steinway & Sons. William was not a partner until he turned 21 in 1856. He is listed in the firm’s record book as the soundboard maker for the first pianos brought out by the company. The company won some prizes at local fairs, which brought them further business, and they soon gained a reputation for good design and construction. As William seemed to be the one best in control of English, he soon found himself handling the business end of the company, which involved being in contact with other companies and persons in New York. Having moved from the first shop at least once, the company was in position to build a sizable new factory covering the block on Fourth (now Park) Avenue from 52nd to 53rd Street, which they occupied until 1910.

138:

William Steinway, circa 1860 Photographer unknown, New York City Courtesy of Henry Z. Steinway Archive

During the Civil War, several of the Steinway men joined the Union Army, and William’s younger brother, Albert, was an officer. One of the difficult episodes during the War were the Draft Riots in 1863, during which a large mob of mostly Irish working-class men arrived at the factory of the German Steinways with the thought of doing some damage. The Steinways had had the foresight to enlist an Irish Catholic priest, who joined them to face down the mob. During the war, the Steinways worked on a new building on East 14th Street to serve as showrooms and business offices. In 1866, they added an important concert hall to Steinway Hall, which hosted important concerts and meetings until shortly before Carnegie Hall was built on 57th Street in 1891.

The Steinways were soon in the business of sponsoring artists, especially pianists, both American and European. William’s business acument was added to his musical talents (he was a fine tenor—the first diary entry centers on his singing a tenor solo in a Liederkranz concert with the New York Philharmonic), and Steinway & Sons sponsored important concert tours, not only in New York but around the country by Anton Rubinstein, and many others, including, in the 1890’s Ignaz Paderewski. William added being a concert impresario to his other business ventures and continued his leadership in the New York Liederkranz, the largest of New York’s many German singing societies. William was President of the group at least ten times, and was its President at his death.

He soon added investment in real estate. In the early 1870s, the company began acquiring farm land in the Astoria district of eastern Long Island, and William’s diary is full of buying and disposing of home sites and manufacturing locations in Steinway Village. The company built a second factory there, which became the only factory in 1910, and purchased a sizable mansion to which William’s family went in the summers. The factory was partly to get workers out of Manhattan and the influences of a newly emergent labor movement, in which William could find very little pleasure, and the real estate market allowed the company to provide workers with affordable housing in the neighborhood of the factory.

By then, William had taken advantage of Steinway’s success in an important technical exposition in Paris in 1867, at which pianos both European and American were an important part of the technology on view, and in which Steinway and its major American competitor, Chickering & Sons of Boston, took the top honors for pianos. That success gave impetus to William’s desire to expand Steinway’s foreign trade, and he succeeded in a few years in making the Steinway name one of the premier piano names in the world, establishing a branch in London, sending pianos to royal palaces in Europe and to distant places (Australia, Japan). The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition was another opportunity for public admiration. And at that time, the company became a family-owned corporation, of which William was President and Treasurer until his death.

But just at that time, William discovered a social factor he had not counted on. He and his wife, Regina, his marriage to whom is the first event in the diary, had had three children, George, born in 1866, Paula, born in 1867, and Alfred, born in 1869. In 1875, William learned something he had become concerned about for several months: Alfred was not his son. Pride required that he divorce Regina, which happened during all the busy times of the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and she and Alfred went off to live in Nancy, France. William, then, became the sole parent of George and Paula. Fortunately for him and them, he was able to afford full-time surrogate parental help.

But he certainly did not wish to stay unmarried, and in 1880, having been encouraged by his brother Theodore to consider remarrying, and assisted by Theodore in scouting out some appropriate young women in Dresden, Germany, he went to Germany to meet this family, a family that, in fact, the Steinways had known when they lived for a time in New York, and once engaged in trade in felt—a necessary material for piano makers to purchase. He met the two Ranft daughters in Dresden and decided that Elizabeth was the one he wanted, and they were married forthwith in August of 1880. Earlier he had taken his son George to France and met Regina briefly, which seems to have passed off pleasantly. She would die there in 1882.

16: An image

William Steinway, 1882 Photograph by Carl Borntraeger, Wiesbaden, Germany Courtesy of Henry Z. Steinway Archive

Coming home to New York with Elizabeth (he referred to her as Ellie), he was stricken with the worst case of gout that he had had up to that time—and he had been troubled by gout quite frequently. The voyage was spent in dreadful pain, and, coming to New York, he had to be carried off the ship by eight men and carried into their house by strong Steinway employees. But he and Ellie had what gives indication of a very happy marriage, producing three children, William (b. 1881). Theodore (b. 1883), and Maud (b. 1889). Both boys were later important in the company, Theodore being its President, 1927–1955).

The company continued to prosper, though there were economic ups and downs during the remaining years of William’s life. He steadfastly refused to consider any political office, though he was offered some opportunities, especially a significant position in the U. S. Treasury Department that his friend Grover Cleveland dangled in front of him. A lifelong Democrat, he was active in political affairs and a confidant of more than one major politician, but never a politician himself. At the end of his life he was a member and Chairman of the New York Rapid Transit Commission, helping to design what became New York’s sub waysystem.

William suffered the sudden death of Ellie from heart failure on the day before his birthday in 1893, and he watched the deterioration of his son George, perhaps from alcoholism. William died on November 30, 1896, of typhus. The diary ends on November 8, 1896; he was suffering his last illness at that time.