Chickering & Sons

Chickering & Sons
Subsidiary
Industry Musical instruments
Founded 1823 in Boston, Massachusetts
Founder Jonas Chickering
Defunct 1983 (1983)
Headquarters Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Products Pianos
Parent Gibson

Chickering & Sons was an American piano manufacturer located in Boston, Massachusetts, known for producing award-winning instruments of superb quality and design. The company was founded in 1823 by Jonas Chickering and James Stewart, but the partnership dissolved four years later. By 1830 Jonas Chickering became partners with John Mackay, manufacturing pianos as "Chickering & Company", and later "Chickering & Mackays" until the senior Mackay's death in 1841, and reorganized as "Chickering & Sons" in 1853. Chickering pianos continued to be made until 1983.

History

Jonas Chickering, founder.

It was P.T. Barnum who persuaded Jenny Lind - the Swedish Nightingale - to make a concert tour of the United States. After her agreement, Barnum commissioned the Chickering company to manufacture a custom grand piano for her nationwide tour, ultimately involving 93 performances. The piano was completed by August 1850; Lind arrived in September and the concert series began in Boston. Her pianist was Otto Goldschmidt, whom she married at the end of her tour.

Coincidentally, as the tour began, Henry E. Steinway (Steinweg) and his large family arrived in New York as immigrants from Germany. Henry attended the opening night of the NYC concert series but showed little interest in the diva. His profound interest was in the Chickering piano, to which he dashed for such careful examination that he nearly had to be hauled away so the concert could begin.

On December 1, 1852, a massive fire destroyed Chickering's piano factory located at 336 Washington Street in Boston. One policeman was killed. The walls of the building collapsed, and set adjoining structures on fire. A new factory was built in 1853-54 at 791 Tremont Street in Boston. From 1860-1868 space in the building was the location of the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, who made over 100,000 rifles and carbines for the U.S. Army and sportsmen from 1862-1868.[1] This structure still stands today. It was renovated into artist studios in 1972.[2]

Jonas Chickering made several major contributions to the development of piano technology, most notably by introducing a one-piece, cast-iron plate to support the greater string tension of larger grand pianos.

Chickering was the largest piano manufacturer in the United States in the middle of the 19th century, but was surpassed in the 1860s by Steinway. In 1867, Jonas's son Frank Chickering had the Imperial Cross of the Legion of Honour, then one of the world's most prestigious non-military awards, bestowed upon him by Emperor Napoleon III for services to the art of music, one of more than 200 awards the piano manufacturer garnered over the years.

The company became in 1908 part of the American Piano Company (Ampico).[3]

The Chickering name continues to be applied to new pianos today, as a brand name of the Baldwin Piano Company.

Chickering Halls

The firm operated a concert hall in Boston in several successive locations:

The firm also ran the "Chickering Hall" concert auditorium in New York City at no.130 Fifth Avenue, 1875-1901. The building was situated on the north-west corner (not north-east contrary to some sources) of Fifth Avenue and West Eighteenth Street, and was the venue for Oscar Wilde's first lecture in America. [Source: New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age, Robert A.M. Stern (Author), Thomas Mellins (Author), David Fishman (Author)].[4]

Images

References

  1. ↑ Marcot, Roy A. "Spencer Repeating Firearms" 1995.
  2. ↑ Chickering Piano Works Fire at CelebrateBoston.com
  3. ↑ Grove's dictionary of music and musicians. NY: 1920
  4. 1 2 3 The commemoration of the founding of the house of Chickering & Sons upon the eightieth anniversary of the event, 1823-1903. Boston: Chickering & Sons, 1904
  5. ↑ "Closing of a Well-Known Concert Room." Dwight's Journal of Music, v.30, no.5, May 21, 1870.
  6. ↑ "Americanization of piano trade in U.S. exemplified by Chickering & Sons." The Music Trades, April 5, 1919
  7. ↑ George H. Chickering Dead; Last Male Survivor of the Well-Known Family of Piano-forte Makers Passes Away in Boston." New York Times, November 18, 1899

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Chickering & Sons.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.