[tine]

My family has been owning for many many years an upright piano "STEINWAY STUYVESANT New York" (Stuyvesant Piano Co - N Y). I would be very interested in knowing the origin of this piano. Is it a real Steinway piano ? Was Steinway Stuyvesant company prior to Steinway and Sons ?

Here are a few specifications concerning our piano:
- serial number: 15,216
- 137 cm high
- 147 cm wide
- 75 cm deep
- strings (steel and 18 copper)
- 7 octave keyboard (equaling 88 keys; good original ivories)
- 2 pedals
- case in mahogany finish
- written mark (Stuyvesant N. York) on the lower part of the right side facing
- lock and casters (small wheels).

Is the normal tuning less than A440 for this type (old) of pianos??
The piano will have a total mechanical rebuilding.The quality of tone is not good: does it mean a change of strings (some strings are rusty)?

I thank you in advance for all the informations you could send me.
Yours sincerely, avec tous mes remerciements,

[Barrie Heaton]

Stuyvesant Piano company was part of the Aeolian company nothing to do with Steinways,
Steinways, changed their name from Steinweg to Steinweg The name Steinweg was changed to Steinway in 1863 when the firms was founded in New York.

In 1836 Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, 1796-1871, by this time was making pianos in his kitchen at Seesen in Germany. His father was a humble forester who, after returning from the Napoleonic Wars, found only Heinrich and two other brothers to greet him out of a family of 16 children, the rest having died of hunger and exposure.

Apart from Heinrich, the youngest of the family, they were all killed by lightening while working by the roadside. Heinrich was a bugler at the battle of Waterloo and won a medal for playing the bugle in the face of the enemy. To relieve boredom in the barracks he made a number of stringed instruments and when he married he presented his wife with a piano with two strings to each note. The next piano took him some 13 years of working in the evenings while during the day he was employed as a cabinet maker in an organ factor. In 1835 he helped Frederic Grotian to complete his first piano, a square. The names of Grotian and Steinweg became permanently linked in 1865, but now only in name, as the firm of Grotian Steinweg and the firm of Steinway are completely separate from each other.



Your piano was made in 1907


Barrie,
_________________
Barrie Heaton
Web Master UK Piano Page

[Bill Kibby]

I'm a bit confused! Has the piano got "Steinway" written on it?
If so, what is the exact wording?
And if it hasn't, why does Steinway come into the enquiry?
And what has the history of Steinweg got to do with Stuyvesant?
_________________
I do not buy, sell or value pianos, but I sometimes rescue wood-frame pianos in the UK.

My own website: http://www.pianogen.org

Email Bill@PianoGen.org

Piano History Centre

[tine]

Thank you for your answers!
- The "STEINWAY STUYVESANT NEW YORK" mark (into an half-moon shape) appears in the middle of the lid (inner side) that goes over (closes & opens) the keyboard. It is engraved with ivory letters. A second mark "STUYVESANT PIANO CO NY" appears in relief on the upper right side of the steel plate (I don't know the exact term in English). A third blurred mark "...vesant ...york..." appears on the outer right side of the case (lower and front part).
- The serial number appears (rather stuck than painted ?) on the upper left side of the steel plate (figures 1 are written in the anglo-saxon way). This number appears also through the steel plate, carved on the upper right side of the wooden plate at the rear of the steel plate.
I shall be always happy to get more informations on that piano!

[lpt100]

*shrugs and sheepishly asks 'could the name possibly be anything to do with the piano dealer? was mentioned to me by my tuner before about how some old companies didn't put their name to the piano but the piano bore the name of the dealer insted?' *backs away slowly
_________________
The pianoforte is to music what print is to poetry.

[Bill Kibby]

I think your only hope here is to contact the Steinway company direct, and see if they have any record of such a piano being produced by Steinway for Stuyvesant, or vice vera.
_________________
I do not buy, sell or value pianos, but I sometimes rescue wood-frame pianos in the UK.

My own website: http://www.pianogen.org

Email Bill@PianoGen.org

Piano History Centre

[Bill Kibby]

I've been looking around for clues, and the Steinway books don't seem to mention Stuyvesant. The only tenuous link between the two firms is that they both installed Pianols in certain models, but these would be called "Stuyvesant Pianola" or "Steinway Pianola", not connecting the two names.
_________________
I do not buy, sell or value pianos, but I sometimes rescue wood-frame pianos in the UK.

My own website: http://www.pianogen.org

Email Bill@PianoGen.org

Piano History Centre