Steinway & Sons Grand Piano: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This grand piano was made by Steinway & Sons in New York in 1936. Called the “Medium” grand, this piano is 5'7" in length and offers the best of both worlds, a professional quality piano appropriate for a home both in size and acoustics. This piano is a model M with serial number 288983. The piano has a compass of AAA-c5, Steinway accelerated action, felt hammers, steel strings, single-, double-, and triple-strung, 3 pedals: una corda, sustention, and dampers, a one-piece-iron frame, cross-strung, and a dark mahogany veneer case.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1936
• maker: Steinway & Sons
• Object Name: piano
• Physical Description: felt (overall material)
• Physical Description: steel (overall material)
• Physical Description: iron (overall material)
• Physical Description: wood (overall material)
• Place Made: United States: New York, New York City
• ID Number: 1985.0935.01
• catalog number: 1985.0935.01
• accession number: 1985.0935
• Credit Line: Gift of C. Malcolm Watkins, in memory of Lura Woodside Watkins
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.