Steinway Hall

In 1864, William Steinway built elegant showrooms housing over 100 Steinway & Sons pianos at 71–73 East 14th Street, between University Place and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.[2] During the next two years, demand for Steinway pianos had increased dramatically. Construction of the first Steinway Hall was pushed by the need for expansion, increased promotion, and better presentation of pianos and music culture through regular live performances.

William Steinway carried planning and construction of the first Steinway Hall with the full support and cooperation from the City of New York. The concert hall was designed with 2,000 seats, and had a concert stage for a full 100-piece symphony orchestra. The concert hall was built in 1866 behind the showrooms on 14th Street in Manhattan and was one of the first concert halls for wider audiences in New York City.[2] Four days after the Academy of Music on 14th Street a few blocks away burned down to the ground, on May 22, 1866, William Steinway laid the first stone of the Steinway Hall building.[3] The hall opened on October 31, 1866.[4] Its four floors had enough space to fit in a showroom for more than 100 pianos, the concert hall and rooms for piano lessons. The hall and the other rooms were illuminated with over 700 gaslights. The ground floor was occupied by the showroom and the office. The first floor there was taken by the concert hall. With 2,500 seats at that time, it was one of the biggest halls in the city of New York, becoming soon one of the cultural centers of the United States.[5] One critic wrote, "no larger auditorium—before or since—has ever been built by a musical instrument manufacturer."[3] Another observer, Moses King, called Steinway Hall "the cradle of classical music in this country".[4]

The first Steinway Hall was also the home for the New York Philharmonic for 25 years, from 1866 to 1891, when Carnegie Hall opened in Midtown Manhattan. William Steinway recognized that it would be good for piano sales, if famous piano artists have a place to play on Steinway pianos, and also take a Steinway piano on a concert tour. In 1872, Steinway & Sons organised an unprecedented concert tour of 215 performances in 239 days for the Russian virtuoso pianist Anton Rubinstein. Rubinstein's legendary concert at the Steinway Hall was sold out with 3000 guests, many of them standing. Cultural highlights included performances of such artists as Fritz Kreisler, Walter Damrosch, Jenny Lind, readings of Charles Dickens and performances of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Steinway Hall, as the center of New York's cultural life, attracted more customers to Steinway showrooms. The marketing idea was so successful for Steinway & Sons, that competition forced other piano manufacturers, such as the Aeolian Company and Chickering & Sons to build their own concert halls, the Aeolian Hall and Chickering Hall in New York. Other piano companies also invested in renowned stars tours in the United States, such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was invited on a two-month US tour in 1891, by piano maker Wm. Knabe & Co. Around the same time, concert halls were also built in Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

After Carnegie Hall's opening, the piano industry moved uptown to 57th Street, where Carnegie Hall was located. Accordingly, the main auditorium of Steinway Hall on 14th Street was closed, although performances continued to take place in the smaller recital halls. The S. Klein Union Square Realty Corporation bought the Steinway Hall on 14th Street in 1923 and closed it two years later. While the section on 14th Street was immediately demolished, the rear section housing the concert hall remained through the 1980s.[2]

Steinway Hall on 57th Street

The rotunda of the Steinway Hall on 57th Street, with artist Mia LaBerge's Madison Bluestone art case piano in the foreground

After the closure of the auditorium at 14th Street, Steinway & Sons began looking for new sites near Carnegie Hall.[2] By July 1916, the company had found a site at 109–113 West 57th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues with a lot reaching back to 58th Street.[6][7] William K. Benedict and Marvin & Davis designed a 10-story building for the site. However, work was held up because the 1916 Zoning Resolution prohibited non-residential buildings on that section of 58th Street, and because existing residents had filed lawsuits against Steinway & Sons, which were settled by July 1920. Steinway & Sons acquired eight lots on 57th and 58th Streets from 1920 to 1924, and Warren and Wetmore designed a 16-story building, for which plans were filed in July 1923. The new Steinway Hall was built from June 1924 to April 1925.[8] The official opening night was on October 27, 1925, with a performance by Willem Mengelberg and 35 musicians from the New York Philharmonic , broadcast over radio.[9][10]

The building cost $3 million,[8][11] representing about a quarter of Steinway & Sons' total assets at the time.[8][12] The building was a speculative development for Steinway & Sons, but was not particularly successful, with a rate of return of only 2%.[13][14][15] Steinway & Sons used the five lowest floors and rented out the upper floors. The basement housed storage, shipping, and a grand-piano testing area; the first story, a reception room and salesroom; the second story, salesrooms; the third floor, executive offices; and the fourth and fifth stories, music studios. The "piano bank" in the basement had over 300 pianos, valued at over $15 million.[10] A New Yorker article in 2001 said, "almost every twentieth-century virtuoso has passed through" the first-floor reception room while headed to the Concert and Artists Department in the basement.[10][16]

Among the notable performances at the 57th Street building was the 1928 duo piano recital by Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff.[10] In 1997, Steinway Artist Jeffrey Biegel performed the first classical music recital transmitted live over the internet with audio and video, sent from Steinway Hall in New York City.[17]

Steinway Hall and its land were sold to the Manhattan Life Insurance Company in 1958.[18] After the sale, Steinway & Sons continued to lease space there, while Manhattan Life had its headquarters at Steinway Hall until 2001. Steinway Hall was acquired by 111 West 57th Street Associates in 1980.[13] Throughout the years, the building's tenants also included publications such as Musical America, Architectural Forum, and The Economist, as well as CBS broadcasting studios.[19] In May 1999, Steinway bought back the building for approximately $62 million, and leased the land for 99 years from the former owner, who chose to retain ownership of the land.[20] The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated Steinway Hall as a New York City landmark in November 2001.[21][22] By June 2013, Steinway & Sons sold the building's leasehold interest to a partnership led by JDS Development Group for $46.3 million.[23] The Steinway Hall on 57th Street would be incorporated into a residential development at 111 West 57th Street, which started construction in 2015.[24]

After selling the Steinway Hall on West 57th Street, Steinway moved out of the building in the end of 2014.[25] In 2016, a new Steinway Hall opened at 1133 Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street,[26] next to The Town Hall, a Steinway venue.[27]

• Fostle, D.W. (1995). The Steinway Saga: An American Dynasty. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-19318-2.
• Lieberman, Richard K. (1997). Steinway and Sons. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-24716-9.
• "Steinway Hall" (PDF). New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. November 13, 2001.