Friday, June 11, 2021 – HE CAME TO AMERICA TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF HIS WORKERS

By admin

FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2021

The

387th Edition

WILLIAM  STEINWAY

Stephen Blank

William Steinway at his Queens mansion, around 1885. Photograph by Frederick Steinway, Astoria, New York. Courtesy of Henry Z. Steinway Archive.

William Steinway appeared in several recent essays (the Queensboro Bridge, LaGuardia airport) and was much involved with the development of Astoria, so I felt it was time for a deeper look.

Steinway was born in Brunswick, Germany in 1835, the fourth son of Henry Engelhard Steinway. After elementary school with special training in languages and music, he apprenticed in a piano factory. With his father and brothers, William came to the United States in 1850 and they all began working for established New York piano firms.

Soon they struck out on their own, going into business as Steinway & Sons in 1853, with a factory at Park and East 53rd. The company grew quickly, secured dozens of patents for innovations in the mechanics of the piano, and moved on to larger manufacturing spaces in the city, even becoming the largest employer in the city in the 1860s.

William was the marketing genius of the family. In 1866, he built a concert hall behind his showroom, on 14th Street, the heart of Manhattan’s theater and shopping district. It was the first Steinway Hall, and an important showcase for artists, a concert hall only surpassed by the building of Carnegie Hall, in 1891.

Astoria and Steinway Village
In 1870, Steinway bought 400 acres of land in Astoria, where German immigrants, mostly furniture and cabinet makers, were settling. The Steinways moved the factory there for more space and to keep his workers from the ferment of labor organizing and radicalism, some of which had roiled their own factory. (Their factory was almost burned down in the Draft Riots.) Operations expanded to include key inputs – a sawmill to prepare lumber and a foundry to make the cast iron plates that sit the piano. 

In 1880, William and his brother Theodore established a new piano factory in Hamburg, Germany. Theodore headed the German factory, and William returned to Queens. The Hamburg and Queens factories regularly exchanged experience about their patents and technique despite the distance between them, and continue to do so.

Beyond the Astoria factory complex, Steinway created an entire company town. Steinway Village spanned from what is now Ditmars Boulevard up to the East River/Bowery Bay; and from 31st Street to Hazen Street. His diary entries reflect his pride in creating a company town where workers could own brick homes, drink fresh water, and stroll under shade trees on Steinway Avenue—still the main thoroughfare in this part of Queens.

Almost all of his workers were German immigrants, and German was spoken in the factory. Steinway Village had a public school that provided instruction in German as well as English (and one of the country’s first free kindergartens), singing clubs, German beer halls, the Steinway Reformed Church (built in 1890 on land donated by William Steinway, still standing at 41st St and Ditmars), and the Steinway Library, started with books from William’s own collection (now a branch of the Queens Library). Steinway helped develop a network of transportation, including streetcars, trolleys, and horse-car railroads to make the neighborhood more convenient and bring in additional revenue, and a ferry for German workers from across the East River in Yorkville to ferry across to work in the factory.

In 1886, William and George Ehret, a fellow German immigrant who had opened the Hell Gate Brewery in 1866 across the East River in Yorkville, decided to create a beach recreation area nearby where Steinway’s employees could go for entertainment. It was also open to the public, as Steinway hoped other working-class visitors from Manhattan would travel on his streetcars, trolleys, and ferries. In its heyday (1895-1915), 10,000 visitors were showing up each Sunday and it became known as North Beach. During the day it remained a wholesome family retreat, but at night it was the hot spot for young singles to drink beer, dance, and mingle. At one time it was more popular than Brooklyn parks, as “the Coney Island of Queens.”

Steinway was a visionary with big ideas for the city and its transportation systems. In addition to the ferry that transported workers across the East River, he began a tunnel that would connect Queens to Manhattan via underground subway trains (though never finished, today the subway tunnel doing that bears his name). He also helped develop other industrial and business endeavors in the area, buying a natural gas distributor, and investing in several banks.

Daimler
One other business adventure was Daimler AG’s first venture into American markets. Steinway met Gottlieb Daimler during a stay in Germany in 1888. Like Daimler, he believed in a bright future for the internal combustion engine automobile. After he returned, plans quickly materialized. On September 29, 1888, Daimler Motor Company of New York was founded and initially produced gasoline and petroleum engines. Steinway and Daimler also started seriously considering the production of automobiles in America, as shipping costs and custom duties prevented import of highly coveted “old-world” automobiles. From 1892 until 1896/97 full copies of the German cars were produced in the premises of the Steinway Astoria plant.

Rapid Transit

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.

He remained deeply involved in developing public transportation in the City. Steinway spent the last seven years of his life serving on—and chairing—rapid transit commissions that were confronted with every conceivable obstacle to planning a subway for New York City.

Every time the rapid transit commissioners got close to approving a route system there was a catch: legal restrictions, opposition from the owner of existing elevated railways, unhappy property owners, court and political battles, arguments over an above-ground or underground system, and contention over public vs. private funding.

Despite these controversies, Steinway stayed with the project. He had a vision for what New Yorkers needed to get around town speedily: a four-track, largely underground system, with two middle tracks for express trains. “No citizen should have to walk more than three or four blocks to a station,” he told the New York Times. Steinway and his fellow commissioners recommended that trains run on a relatively new and clean power source: electricity.

Scandal 
Steinway married Regina Roos in April 1861. He was 26 and she 17 and the couple seemed deeply in love. The couple had three children; George, Paula, and Alfred, who was born in 1869. In 1875, he learned that Alfred was not his son. Regina’s affairs were a severe trauma for him and, after learning of her infidelities (Alfred’s father was not her only lover) in September 1875, heard many sordid details over the ensuing months until the couple divorced in August 1876. After the divorce, Alfred moved with his mother to France. Steinway later happily remarried.

Final Note

Steinway died in 1896, at the scarcely ripe old age of 61. He was ambitious and aggressive and successful. He did not rise to the level of the great Robber-Barons of the age, and was never condemned as they were. He was fascinated by the emerging City, and by the City’s need for public transportation and was a vigorous advocate for the infrastructure that would support it. He was an immigrant and German to the core. All in all, a pretty fair New Yorker.

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Ed Litcher, Nina Lublin, Jay Jacobson, Hara Reiser, 
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Stephen Blank

RIHS
June I, 2021

Sources

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

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