1935

  • Steinway & Sons net loss is $303,000.
  • Steinway & Sons makes $1,195,335 in piano sales.
  • Steinway & Sons builds 1,367 pianos, of which only 1 is upright.
  • Steinway & Sons pays N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency $130,000 to develop a new advertising campaign for Model S “baby grand” piano.
  • By this year, Steinway & Sons’ concert and artist budget falls to 25% of that in 1929.
  • Theodore E. Steinway, age 52, briefly considers his eldest son Theodore D. “Teed” Steinway for the role of Steinway & Sons president. He soon decides that Theodore D. Steinway, even though a talented piano engineer, lacks the qualities that would make him a strong business leader.
  • The demand for Hammond organ, sold by Steinway & Sons dealers, spreads rapidly across the United States.
  • Carl Haddorff, the owner of Haddorff Piano Company of Rockforf, Illinois, designs a new “studio console” piano, “Haddorff Vertichord Grand”, only 39” high – (or 45″, by other accounts) – only 10 sq. feet of floor space. The new piano quickly captures the niche of the market that could be Steinway & Sons’, if Theodore E. Steinway hasn’t rejected Paul Bilhuber’s mini upright piano design in 1932. Steinway & Sons competitors will soon build their variations of Haddoff’s product, branded as Minipiano, Musette, Pianette, Spinet, and so on. (Steinway & Sons, however, won’t participate in the “console piano race” until 1938.)
  • The American piano market begins to recover, largely thanks to the Federal Music Project.