1855

  • Steinway & Sons builds 112 pianos. About 1/3 of them use the “sweep-scale”, invented by Frederick Mathushek.
  • Steinway & Sons employs 30 workers (by other accounts, 55).
  • Thomas H. Chambers, the owner of a piano store at 385 Broadway, receives 24 Steinway & Sons pianos.
  • Steinway & Sons begins to establish a chain of dealers in various parts of the United States: in upstate New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and even as far from New York as in Louisville, Kentucky, and Savannah, Georgia.
  • William Wake, an attorney who makes money by ensnaring struggling pianomakers into bankruptcy, liquidates the assets of the pianomaker William Nunns, who owes William Steinway $300 in unpaid wages.