1929

  • Steinway & Sons’ net profit is $602,000.
  • Steinway & Sons gross sales are $5,000,000.
  • Steinway & Sons makes $64,304 in piano rentals.
  • Steinway & Sons’ advertising expenses reach almost $107 per piano, over 10% of the average selling price.
  • Alexander Greiner initiates the building of a custom Steinway & Sons piano for Josef Hofmann, with white keys slightly narrower than the standard width, to make it easier for Hofmann’s small hands to take wide chords and move around the keyboard. The width of the Hofmann’s custom keyboard is slightly over 47 inches, instead of the standard 48. Hofmann’s piano also has highly polished, almost mirror-like fallboard, with “Steinway & Sons” logo moved to the left-hand corner.
  • Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, becomes an All-Steinway School.
  • Theodore E. Steinway orders to close the company-owned dealership stores in Cincinnati, Columbus, Charleston, and Huntington, that have been losing money since 1924. The last of the stores is liquidated just a couple of month before the “Black Tuesday”, and Steinway & Sons makes $160,000 by leasing the premises.
  • Steinway & Sons stockholders add $1,000,000 to the surplus account, which now contains the amount of money equivalent to the company’s profits from selling 28,000 pianos.
  • Steinway & Sons lays off 120 workers at Ditmars factory.
  • On the place, formerly occupied by now-demolished North Beach amusement park, a 105-acre private flying field is established (known initially as Glenn H. Curtiss Airport, later as North Beach Airport – and after 1953, as LaGuardia Airport).