Town & Country
Take A Tour Of The New Steinway Hall
America's Premier Piano Maker Has New Digs.
By Sam Dangremond
April 12, 2016
When Steinway & Sons announced it was selling Steinway Hall, its flagship home on West 57th Street for nearly 90 years, to make room for a luxury condominium tower in 2012, not everyone was happy. "It just makes you want to cry, you know, that here is this venerable old company that's gone through all kinds of changes and now going through, probably, the biggest change," Steinway artist Christopher O'Riley, host of From the Top on NPR, told the radio station.
But some of the $46 million the company made from selling the 88-year-old building and its air rights has been put to use in a new location a few blocks south. Steinway & Sons unveiled its new 19,000-square-foot headquarters at 1133 Avenue of the Americas yesterday. Designed by Selldorf Architects, the new location includes a 74-seat recital hall with a cutting-edge, custom-made Steinway Lyngdorf sound system and live streaming abilities that will allow musicians to connect with audiences all over the globe.
"This is only the third Steinway Hall to be built in New York over the past 163 years, so there was an inherent desire to create something truly special that will become an exciting new part of the company's history and the history of this city," Michael Sweeney, CEO of Steinway & Sons, said. Below, a tour of the new space.
A Spencer Fitch Art Installation
Entitled Newton's Theory of Color and Music (The Goldberg Variations), the work is an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg Variations" that explores the intersection of music, color and emotion through light.
