- Draft Riot in New York – one of the most dramatic days in the history of the city, and also in the history of Steinway & Sons.
- Starting with the civil protest against the Conscription Act (a government document that announced the compulsory draft of men into the Union Army), the rioters flood Manhattan from Battery Park to Harlem in waves of insurrection, arson, looting and murder.
- Firemen of Black Joke Engine Company destroy the city’s draft office, its lottery wheel and papers, and than set the building on fire. As the fire spreads to other buildings, another fire engine company arrives. The rioters attack the firefighters, preventing them from extinguishing the fire, while the entire block burns. Women and children, trapped in the burning buildings, scream for help while the mob throws rocks through the windows, trying to injure the federal officials hiding in the upper floors.
- The mob, consisting of no less than 5,000 people, storms and captures the New York City Armory. The rioters arm themselves, leaving the armory empty of weapons, and burn it.
- Steinway & Sons workers leave their workbenches and join the mob.
- A gang of allegedly Irish women tear out railway tracks on Fourth Avenue along six city blocks between 53rd and 59 Streets – just north of Steinway & Sons factory.
- At 5 P.M. heavily armed mob arrives at Steinway & Sons’ Fourth Avenue factory, after having burnt several buildings at Third Avenue. The factory is empty and closed, and only sixty-six-year-old Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg and his sons Charles and William remain in the office, to defend their work of lifetime. (Albert is with the National Guard, and Henry, Jr. is too ill with tuberculosis to be able to help his father and brothers.)
- Charles Steinway steps outside to face the mob, risking his life to protect the factory. Behind him is the Steinways & Sons’ drying yard, filled with flammable objects: hundreds of thousands of board-feet of lumber, and the factory, containing hundreds of gallons of varnish, wood scraps, sawdust, coal and unfinished pianos. Father McMahon, a priest from the nearby Catholic orphanage, joins Charles Steinway on the steps of the factory, and helps to pacify the mob. Charles Steinway distributes $40 cash and a $30 check among the mob’s ringleaders.
- The mob leaves Steinway & Sons factory, and a short time later sets fire to a lumberyard of Ogden & Company, burning an entire city block. The mob then proceeds toward Yorkwille, where it will burn many more buildings.
- Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg and his sons Charles and William spend a sleepless night at the factory, ready for the mob to come back.