If you were to guess what the most intricate thing being made in America today is, chances are you wouldn’t imagine that it’s a piano. Almost entirely still hand made and assembled in Queens, New York after 160 years, Steinway pianos are known the world over. Lesser known, is the fact that Steinway & Sons shaped the history of Queens when they created an entire utopian village out of the marshlands we now call Astoria. At the Steinway factory, where a combination of decades old machines, and new, cutting-edge ones are still producing a 1000 instruments a year, discover the remarkable history of the family that made so much more than just pianos…
Walking into the elegant Steinway factory in Astoria, one of the first things you notice is what is missing– the sound of a piano. What does hit you however is the smell of sawdust, and the distant sounds of sanding, delicate hammering and wood being sawn. It’s more like walking into a master craftsman carpenter’s guild in old Europe rather than a modern factory in Queens.
