Henry Engelhard Steinway made pianos in Germany and the United States. He is remembered for being a founder of a leading piano manufacturing firm, Steinway and Sons, which remained under family ownership until 1972.
Background
Henry was born on February 15, 1797 in Wolfshagen, Germany. The names of his parents are not noted in the family records. In his boyhood and youth he endured many hardships.
At the age of 8, he was an orphan and thrown upon his own resources, until his father and brothers, once thought to have been killed in action, returned and claimed him once more. During the Napoleonic invasion of Germany several of his brothers were killed and the Steinweg house was burned. Then, at 15, he was orphaned once again.
Education
He attended public school in his home town in Germany.
Career
In 1815 Steinway was drafted for the army and is said to have taken part in the battle of Waterloo. Though he was without musical training and manual instruction, he had a talent for craftsmanship and an interest in the making of musical instruments. His first instrument, made after his return from the war, was a zither.
In 1818 he entered the shop of an organ builder at Seesen, and became the organist of the village church; two years later he became interested in piano-making. Though his first piano is given various dates between 1825 and 1835, one account relates that it was his wedding-gift to his bride.
In 1839 he exhibited a grand piano and two square pianos at a fair in Brunswick, Germany, where he was awarded the first prize, a gold medal, but in 1848 and 1849 the revolutions in Central Europe ruined his business, and two years later he decided to emigrate to America, where his son Charles had already gone. With his wife and daughters, and all of his sons but Theodore, he embarked from Hamburg on the Helene Sloman, and arrived in New York, June 9, 1851. For about two years he and his sons worked in various piano factories in New York.
On March 5, 1853, they joined forces again to start their own business. A year later they were awarded a medal for a square piano they exhibited at the Metropolitan Fair in Washington.
In 1855 Steinweg exhibited an innovation in pianomaking at the American Institute, New York, a square piano with cross- or over-strung strings, and a full cast-iron frame. For five years after coming to America he concerned himself with building square pianos only, but in 1856 he manufactured a grand piano and in 1862 an upright. Meanwhile the factory quarters on Walker Street, New York, became too small for the growing business, and in 1860 a new factory was completed on Fourth (Park) Avenue at Fifty-third Street.
On April 30, 1861, he and his son signed their first co-partnership agreement, and in July 1864 had their name legally changed to Steinway. Soon after this event tragedy visited the family, for in 1865 two of the sons died. The organization was so crippled that Steinway persuaded his eldest son, Theodore, to come to America and join the business, and aid him in the technical supervision of building pianos.
In 1866 he built Steinway Hall on Fourteenth Street (formally opened in 1867), a building containing retail warerooms and offices for the firm, and a concert hall that became one of the centers of New York's musical life. A few years later he died in New York.
Achievements
In his piano business, which has continuously remained in the possession of his descendants and still bears his name, Henry Engelhard Steinway established an enterprise in which manufacturing has been regarded in the old fashion: as a craft, not as a mere commercial undertaking.
The overstrung scale in a square piano earned the Steinway Piano first prize at the New York Industrial Fair of 1855. In 1862 it gained the first prize in London in competition with the most eminent makers in Europe; and this victory was followed in 1867 by a similar success at the Universal exposition in Paris. According to pianistic giants such as Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, and other high authorities, the Steinways have done more to advance the durability, action, and tone-quality of their instruments than any other makers of Europe or America
Connections
According to family records, his marriage occurred in February 1825, and the bride was Juliane Thiemer. Seven children were eventually born to the Steinwegs: Christian Friedrich Theodore, Doretta, Charles, Henry, Wilhelmina, William, and Albert. Steinweg's piano business prospered.
