Wm. Knabe & Co.

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1884Knabe.jpg

Wm. Knabe & Co. was a piano manufacturing company in Baltimore , Maryland , which was active from the mid-19th to the beginning of the 20th century and was later operated as a subsidiary and brand of Aeolian -American in East Rochester , New York until 1982 . Nowadays the name Wm. Knabe is a trademark of Samick Musical Instruments.

history

Wilhelm Knabe was born on June 3, 1803 in Creuzburg , Saxony-Weimar . The coalition war of 1813 prevented him from studying pharmacy so that he could pursue the same profession as his father as a pharmacist . Instead, Knabe did an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker . After his apprenticeship, he worked as a traveling journeyman for two years , then for three years with a piano maker in Gotha , and later as a piano maker traveling journeyman with various piano manufacturers in Germany.

Wilhelm boy
Factory building (1837)

In 1831, Knabe accompanied his fiancée's family when they emigrated from Sachsen-Meiningen to the United States, but the head of the family died during the crossing and his bride stayed in Baltimore instead of going to Herrmann , Missouri as originally planned , where a brother met had settled a few years earlier. Knabe worked for the well-known piano maker Henry Hartge and abandoned his original plans to become a farmer. Four years later he started repairing pianos and selling used pianos from home. Wm. Knabe's first address was Maryland Route 139 on the corner of Lexington Street.

Boy & Gaehle

In 1839 Knabe entered into a partnership with Henry Gaehle to manufacture pianos. In 1841 the company moved to larger workshops at 13 South Liberty Street. In 1843 they opened a store on the corner of Eutaw Street and Cowpen Alley. Four years later, the business moved to 9 Eutaw Street opposite Eutaw House. Pianos were sold for between $ 180 and $ 400. By 1852 they had expanded to houses 4, 6, 8, 9 and 11 on Eutaw Street. Knabe & Gaehle won first prizes from the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts in 1848, 1849 and 1850 for their square pianos and in 1849 for grand pianos.

In 1852 the company was reorganized as Knabe, Gaehle & Co. by accepting Edward Betts as a partner. In 1853, Knabe announced that her company was the largest piano business in the southern United States and had more than 100 employees. Knabe built pianos from six to seven octaves with a "double action, like Chickering builds them", at prices from 200 to 500 US dollars.

In November 1854, their factory on Cowpen Alley at the back of Eutaw House burned down, causing a loss of $ 190,000. Just five weeks later, the Baltimore Street factory near Paca Street also burned down, with virtually no insurance coverage.

Wm. Knabe & Co.

In the spring of 1855 the partnership began to be dissolved. Henry Gaehle died. Knabe announced that he had bought the entire stock and that he would remain in the business under the company Wm. Knabe & Co. at the old location at North Eutaw Street 1-7, opposite Eutaw House. William Gaehle, who had been a senior partner, announced that he would continue building grand pianos and pianos under the Wm. Gaehle & Co. company on the corner of Pratt and Green Streets, with salesrooms on the corner of Eutaw and Baltimore / Fayette Streets.

Detailed music stand of a boy’s grand piano from 1884

Knabe bought a former paper mill on West Street and China Street to operate a new factory, and in 1859 had salesrooms at 207 Baltimore Street-Fayette Street. He won gold medals for square pianos from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1855, 1856, 1857, and 1858, silver medals from the Metropolitan Institute in Washington, DC in 1857, a medal from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1856, and first prizes from the Mechanics Institute, Richmond, Virginia 1855 and 1856.

In 1860, Knabe began building a new five-story factory on the corner of Eutaw and West Street, but had only completed a wing when the Civil War broke out. This forced him to look for new business in the west to replace the failure of his essential business in the south of the USA. William Knabe died on May 21, 1864. He was followed by his sons William and Ernest J. Knabe and his son-in-law Charles Keidel.

In 1866, Wm. Knabe & Co. introduced the "agraffe treble", with agraffes that were screwed into a thick piece of brass instead of screwing directly into the iron frame.

Piano factory Wm. Knabe & Co., Baltimore, 1866

In 1866 Knabe employed around 230 people and manufactured around a thousand pianos a year, both pianinos and table pianos and grand pianos, the factory's output was around 30 pianos per week. The factory was equipped with a 30-horsepower steam engine, steam-powered elevators and drying rooms were available. In a second building, 40 m long, grand piano cases, soundboards and keyboards were made, cases were veneered and iron frames were bronzed. Additional additions and a dome completed the factory in 1869, which now measured 64 m on Eutaw Street and 50 m on West Street. Wm. Knabe's sales ranked third in the US, behind Steinway & Sons in New York and Chickering & Sons in Boston. In 1870, output was around 40 pianos a week, sold for between $ 600 and $ 2,000.

In 1873, Wm. Knabe & Co. founded a sales room at 112 Fifth Avenue in New York. Grand pianos, table pianos and pianinos were presented. In Philadelphia, a Tschudi & Broadwood harpsichord was also on display at the 1876 Centennial Exposition . In accordance with the changed price systems, Knabe and some of their co-exhibitors claimed the highest honors, as there were no first and second places, etc., but the written report and the judges' comments were decisive. In 1882, Knabe supplied a rosewood grand piano to the White House for President Chester A. Arthur .

Wm. Knabe & Co. piano factory, Eutaw and West Street, Baltimore, 1873
Signet of Wm. Knabe & Co., first used in 1904

William Knabe Jr. died in 1889 at the age of only 47. The company was reported with a capital of one million US dollars. It was headed by Ernest J. Knabe as President.

Ernest J. Knabe died in 1894 at the age of 57. His sons followed him: Ernest J. Knabe, jr. Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Wm. Knabe & Co. founded agencies in Canada and England in 1903 and loaned the factory for the purpose of expanding the business. In 1906 the factory occupied seven buildings, and the original buildings had been massively expanded, with a total of 30,000 square meters of carefully planned production space and 765 employees. Although the factory contained state-of-the-art facilities, such as individually motorized machines and a dust extraction system, Knabe announced that its standard still required careful manual work, so that a large pianino took six months to complete and a grand piano took two years.

American Piano Co.

In 1908, Wm. Knabe & Co. together with Chickering and Sons and the Foster-Armstrong Co. in East Rochester , New York , created the American Piano Co. under New Jersey law . Presidents were Ernest J. Knabe Jr., CHW Foster of Chickering & Sons and George G. Foster, of Foster-Armstrong, who controlled their respective companies, and Haines Brothers, Marshall & Wendell, Brewster, and JB Cook & Co., with a total output of 18,000 pianos a year.

Boy Brothers

Ernest and William Knabe left their positions in 1909, and following some turmoil and business problems in New York, they founded Knabe Brothers in 1911 with offices in Cincinnati , Ohio . They made pianinos and grand pianos in the former Smith and Nixon factory in nearby Norwood , "free from the commercial view that pianos sought to define as a collection of square inches of wood and wire." American Piano Co. has now taken legal action against the use of the name “Knabe”, but the final decision only prevented the Knabe brothers from using their name on the key flap and required them to clarify that it was a start-up . The factory burned down in January 1912, but they quickly resumed production in a makeshift factory before building a new one on the old site. The company went into a preliminary stage of bankruptcy (“receivership”) towards the end of 1916 due to an unpaid bank loan, and at the end of the year the Knabe brothers declared bankruptcy. Their liabilities were 660,000 and their assets were only $ 476,000.

Ernest J. Knabe died in 1927, William Knabe in 1939.

Ampico

In 1927 the New York salesrooms of Wm. Knabe & Co. moved from 39th Street to 657 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 52nd Street in Manhattan, and in 1928 they moved to Ampico Tower on Fifth Avenue and 47th Street as part of the American move Piano Co. to consolidate sales of all Ampico brands, all in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to offset the sharp drop in profits. American Piano entered the “Receivership” in 1929; Knabe's debt was $ 286,000 and his assets $ 415,000.

Advertisement by Knabe Piano, published in 1889

In 1930 the assets of the "American" were bought by the American Piano Corporation, which had been newly established under Delaware law . The board of directors included both former Ampico boards and boards of directors of the Aeolian Corporation. The boys factory was closed, as was Chickering in Boston. Production was eventually transferred to East Rochester, New York, where the brands were formed as separate divisions. The old factories, including Mason & Hamlin in Boston and Amphion in Syracuse , New York, were put on the market for sale.

Aeolian-American

In 1932, the American Piano Corp. merged. with the Aeolian Company, Aeolian-Weber's piano manufacturing subsidiary, to form the Aeolian American Corporation, which consolidated control of more than 20 piano brands, as well as the manufacture of keyboards and cast plates. In 1936 the company was the fourth largest in the US, behind Kimball , Baldwin and Winter & Co.

Berthold Neuer, the Vice President and General Manager from 1927, died in 1938, and his successor Richard K. Paynter died in 1940.

In 1942 the factories were hired to manufacture military aircraft parts, which got the staff and facilities in work. In 1949 at the latest, piano production returned to full capacity. The Aeolian Company and the American Piano Corporation recapitalized and merged with the Aeolian-American Corporation in 1951. The company was bought in 1957 by the owners of Winter & Co. of the Bronx , New York.

In 1981 the combined divisions employed around 300 people at the East Rochester factory; the factory closed the following year.

Sohmer & Co.

In 1985 Sohmer & Co. bought the trademark rights to Knabe and Mason & Hamlin, as well as their jigs and fixtures, from Citicorp Industrial Credit Co., Aeolian's primary creditor. Sohmer & Co. planned to resume production of both divisions with the existing models, but was sold itself and reorganized together with Sohmer and Knabe as subsidiaries of Mason & Hamlin.

today

Wm. Knabe & Co. pianos are manufactured by Samick Musical Instruments, Ltd. which in 2001 acquired the naming rights from PianoDisc, the owners of Mason & Hamlin.

By 2007, boys' pianos were offered in three pianino sizes - one 119 cm (47 inches) in three veneer finishes, one 121 cm (48 inches) and one 131 cm (52 ​​inches) models - and four sizes of grand pianos - in each three housing designs and lengths 158 cm (5 feet 3 inches) the WKG53, 173 cm (5 feet 8 inches) the model WKG58, 193 cm (6 feet 4 inches) the model WKG64, and in lengths of 215 cm (7 ft ) the models WKG70.

In 2006, Samick Music Corporation, the distributor for Samick in the United States and Canada, announced that it was building a logistics and distribution center of 210,000 m² in Gallatin ( Tennessee ), where the Knabe and JS Pramberger lines have been manufactured since 2007.

In 2010, the Samick Music Corporation reported that various Knabe models are receiving their cases from Korean manufacture, and that the keyboards are manufactured and finished in Gallatin, Tennessee.

swell

  • "William Knabe". Baltimore: Past and present, with Biographical Sketches of its Representative Men . Baltimore: Richardson & Bennett 1871. pp. 349-352

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Baltimore Directory for 1845 , John Murphy, Baltimore, 1845 p. 80
  2. ^ Advertisement: Matchett's Baltimore Director, for 1847- '8 RJ Matchett, Baltimore 1847. p. 448.
  3. ^ Promotional brochure: Baltimore Wholesale Business Directory and Business Circular, for the Year 1852 I. Hartman, Baltimore: 1852. p. 21
  4. ↑ Brochure: Adams Sentinel and General Advertiser Gettysburg, Pennsylvania March 29, 1852
  5. ^ Promotional brochure Baltimore Wholesale Business Directory and Business Circular, for the Year 1853 I. Hartman, Baltimore, 1853 p.28
  6. ↑ Promotional brochure: (Erie Music Store) The Erie Observer . Erie, Pennsylvania, March 11, 1854 p. 4 (November 12, 1853 edition)
  7. ^ David A. Dana _ The Fireman: The Fire Departments of the United States, with a Full Account of All Large Fires James French and Company, Boston. 1858 p.254;,; "Large Fire in Baltimore" New York Times November 6, 1854. p. 4
  8. ^ J. Thomas Scharf: The Chronicles of Baltimore; being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time Turnbull Brothers, Baltimore 1874. p. 547
  9. ↑ William Knabe vs. Henry Gaehle and Edward Betts. Dissolution of Knabe, Gaehle & Co. C17 Baltimore City Superior Court (Chancery Papers) MSA C168; Accession No. 40,200-5143-1 / 14, MSA No. C168-747 Location: 2/16/6/14. January 17, 1855
    William Gaehle vs. William Knabe, Edward Betts, and Western Bank of Baltimore. Dissolution of Knabe, Gaehle & Co. C30 Baltimore City Superior Court (Chancery Papers) MSA C168; Accession No. 40,200-5371 MSA No. C168-978 Location: 2/16/6/32 August 31, 1857
  10. ↑ Brochure: Woods' Baltimore Directory, for 1856-'57 John W. Woods, Baltimore p.179
  11. ↑ Wood's Baltimore Directory advertising brochure 1856, p. 119
  12. ↑ Philadelphia Press promotional brochure , March 21, 1859
  13. ↑ “Pianos! Pianos! ” The Republican Compiler Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, January 18, 1859. p.2; Only seven weeks after Knabe, Gaehle & Co. broke up, Knabe had to prepare the piano for the exhibition.
  14. ^ Advertising brochure The Republican Compiler April 18, 1859 p.3
  15. ↑ Spillane p.133; James W. Sheahanuand George S. Upton The Great Conflagration. Chicago: Its Past, Present and Future. Union Publishing Co., Chicago. P. 354; Julius Bauer & Co. acted as Knabe's representative in the Northwest and as representative in New York from 1862 to 1873
  16. ^ William Nordhoff “Improvement in Pianos” United States Patent no. 57,257 April 14, 1866
  17. ↑ James Parton "The Piano in the United States" The Atlantic monthly vol.20 no.117 p. 93
  18. ^ "The Piano Forte Manufactory of Knabe & Co., Baltimore" Debow's review, Agricultural, commercial, industrial progress and resources. Vol.2, No.1, pp. 71-73
  19. ^ "The Great Southern Piano Manufactory" Debow's review, Agricultural, commercial, industrial progress and resources. Vol.1, No. 2, 1866, p. 209
  20. ^ "Piano-fortes" The Great Industries of the United States: Being an Historical Summary of the Origin, Growth, and Perfection of the Chief Industrial Arts of this Country J. Burr & Hyde, Hartford 1873. p. 331
  21. ^ "The Knabe Piano" The Columbia Spy Columbia, Pennsylvania August 20, 1870. p. 3
  22. ^ International Exhibition, 1876. Official Catalog John R. Nagle and Company, Philadelphia 1876. p. 265
  23. ^ "Piano Award - Knabe Victory - Unanimous Award of Highest Honors to William Knabe & Co." New York Times October 1, 1876; all places were awarded with the same prize money, but the votes of the jury were important because they were important for the Could quote sales exhibitions; "The Centennial Awards" New York Times September 28, 1876.
  24. ^ "A Knabe in the White House" New York Times December 16, 1882 p. 5
  25. ^ Daniel Spillane History of the American Pianoforte D. Spillane, New York. 1891. p. 132
  26. ^ Henry Hall (Ed.): America's Successful Men of Affairs Vol.2 The New York Tribune, New York 1896 p.477
  27. ^ Alfred Dolge: Pianos and their Makers Vol.2, Covina Publishing Company, Covina CA, 1913. p. 121.
  28. ^ "Knabe Company Extension - Bond Issue of $ 450,000 Made by Manufacturers" New York Times May 2, 1903
  29. ^ "Three Generations of Piano Manufacturers" McClure's Magazine vol. 26, The SS McClure Co., New York and London. 1906 (advertising insert) pp.16m-16n
  30. ↑ “Inspired Handiwork” The American Monthly Review of Reviews Vol. 24 1906. (advertising insert) p.41
  31. ^ "Piano Makers form $ 12,000,000 Combine" New York Times June 10, 1908 p.5
  32. ↑ "United Surety Loses License" New York Times May 2, 1910
  33. ^ "Knabe Bros. Co." The Newark Advocate Newark, OH, May 5, 1911. p. 12
  34. ^ William N. Osborne Music in Ohio Kent State University Press, Kent Ohio 2004. p. 494
  35. ^ Advertising brochure: The Newark Advocate February 25, 1913. p. 7
  36. ^ Six, Baer & Fuller Dry Goods Co. et al. v. American Piano Co. (211 Fed. Rep., 271.) 8th Circuit, Nov. 28, 1913, The Trade-Mark Reporter Vol. 4, The United States Trade-mark Association, New York. 1914 p.246
  37. ^ "Fires" The American Library Annual, 1913 Publishers' Weekly, 1913, New York. P.38; The value was listed as $ 100,000
  38. ^ "Knabe Brothers Piano Company". The Newark Advocate . February 29, 1912 p. 8
  39. ^ "Receiver for Piano Company". Van Wert Daily Bulletin Van Wert, OH December 9, 1916 p. 1; the amount was $ 100,000
  40. ↑ "Piano Makers in Bankruptcy". New York Times . December 31, 1916. p.17, Your total liabilities were $ 660,000 but your declared assets were only $ 476.38
  41. ^ "EJ Knabe Found Dead". New York Times . September 28, 1924 p. 8
  42. ^ "William Knabe, 66, Piano Manufacturer". Special to the New York Times March 1, 1939. p. 27
  43. ↑ Advertising brochure in the New York Times April 14, 1927
  44. ^ "William Knabe & Co. Move". New York Times March 1, 1928; "Piano Salesrooms United" - New York Times . September 26, 1928. p. 45
  45. ^ "Business Records" New York Times December 27, 1929, p. 45
  46. ^ "Change in American Piano". New York Times . May 22, 1930. p. 47
  47. ^ "The American Piano Company" Harvard Business School Case Study 1934, reprinted in the AMICA Bulletin and available from the Pianola Society
  48. ↑ "Deals & Developments". Time Magazine . August 8, 1932
  49. ^ "Piano Merger Links 2 Largest Makers". New York Times . July 30, 1932. p. 17
  50. ↑ "Merchants of Music". Time Magazine August 10, 1936
  51. ^ "Now Knabe's Vice President". New York Times June 1, 1927. p. 37
  52. ↑ obituary New York Times on July 1, 1938. p.19
  53. ↑ obituary New York Times on August 10, 1940. p.13
  54. ^ "Piano Industry to be Converted". New York Times . June 22, 1942 p.23
  55. ^ "Piano Producers Optimistic on Fall". New York Times . July 28, 1949
  56. ↑ "Aeolian-American Merger". New York Times . May 18, 1951. p. 54
  57. ^ Trademark Assignment Details, Reel / Frame 0053/0478 May 21, 1959; Reports of the Tax Court of the United States United States Government Printing Office , Washington, DC, 1969. p. 110
  58. ↑ Susan Caust Farrell, Directory of Contemporary American Musical Instrument Makers University of Missouri Press, Columbia MO 1981. p.2
  59. ^ Pierce Piano Atlas 9th Edition.
  60. ^ Larry Fine: The Piano Book . Boston: Brookside Press 1987. p. 100; Leslie Brokaw, "Sour Notes" Inc. January 1990
  61. ↑ "Samick Acquires Wm. Knabe & Co.". Music Trades March 1, 2001.
  62. ^ Samick Music Corp. to Relocate North American HQ to Tennessee Expansion Management February 10, 2006.