Fire at the Gabler Piano Factory in 1880

On Sunday, October 24, 1880, a devastating fire spread through the entire piano factory owned and operated by Ernest Gabler, located on 224 East 22^nd Street in NY. It apparently started in the varnishing room which was located on the fifth (top) floor of the building, due to an overheated stove. Built in 1865, the building was also owned by Mr. Gabler. The front faced 22^nd Street, taking up that entire block, and ran through to 21^st Street, forming an ‘L’.

The basement was used as storage and the first floor was offices. The remaining floors were dedicated to the manufacturing of pianos. After more than an hour of fighting the blaze, the firemen finally gained control, but by the time the fire was out, only the brick walls remained.

Mr. Gabler employed 125 workmen. All of their tools were a total loss, estimated to be worth about $5000 in 1880 currency. The rest of the equipment and stock that were destroyed was valued at just over $101,000. Unfortunately the insurance only covered $33,166 of that.

Fortunately they had a good stock of finished instruments that was stored across the street, unharmed by the fire. The Gabler piano was considered a top of the line piano in those days, and the many customers that the firm had could be serviced at least partially so, from the stock that remained, until Mr. Gabler could restore his operation to making pianos at full capacity again. - as reported in the Music Critic and Trade Review magazine of Nov. 5, 1880.

In those days, fires were, unfortunately, not such an uncommon occurrence in piano factories.

FORGOTTEN AXIOMS OF PIANO BUILDING

One hundred years ago, it was stated by Nels Boe, Tuners’ Journal technical editor from 1921 to 1930 that “In Europe a pin is never hammered. Driving is not good for a pin. If you hammer it in, you destroy the thread, which is essential to keep the tuning pin from slipping.”

Nels Boe further stated that: “There is no doubt that if the practice of turning the pin in (or at least partly in) were employed we should have a pin not only smoother in its turning, but a pin on which the pin block would have a firmer grip. No one who has tuned the old German pianos such as Bluthner, Bechstein and Grotrian Steinweg, or the French pianos Erard, Graveau and Pleyel, will deny that the pins in those pianos did not turn smoothly and that they usually ‘stuck’ where one set them. They were all pianos in which the pins were turned in, but to follow this practice under the specialized manufacturing methods common in this country most likely would not produce the same satisfactory results.

“To turn in a pin requires not only the utmost care, but time and patience. If the pin is turned in too fast or too continuously, it will become heated and burnish the hole, lessening, if not entirely destroying, the necessary friction between the pin and the block. The utmost care must also be exercised in the preparation of the drilled hole and the handling of the pin. No shavings or wood particles left from the drilling must be permitted to remain in the hole and the pin, as well as the inside of the hole, must be covered with a layer of powdered rosin.

“It is natural that where satisfactory results depend upon such elaborate preparations and painstaking care; where a little slip or something overlooked may affect the object aimed at, or spell trouble; and where different persons are engaged in the work, that such a process cannot be divided into parts and successfully accomplished as a whole unless each person fully realizes the importance of his part in the finished whole. This ideal condition, it is unnecessary to say, is not frequently met under specialized manufacturing methods.

Therefore, unlike his European colleague, in whose factory the entire process connected with the stringing is done by one man, the American manufacturer has adopted the practice best suited to his manufacturing methods and one which provides fewer chances of anything going wrong, namely, to drive in the pin.”

This goes entirely against what has been taught at least since I have been a piano technician. I think that since we as rebuilders do custom work, we should do it that way at least once to see for ourselves the results.

The Erard: The Beginning of the Performance Piano

Let’s go way back to the 18^th century to visit the beginnings of the Erard Piano-forte maker. Why? By the 19th century, Erard pianos were as popular then as the Steinway is today. Many of the foremost musicians of that time, such as Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt to name just a few, preferred the Erard over any other pianoforte of that era. As reported in the "Music Critic and Trade Review" magazine of September 5, 1880, we read:

“Towards the latter part of last month (August 1880), says the London and Provincial Music Trades Review, the house of Erards’ celebrated the centenary of their foundation. Owing to the recent death of M. Blondel, the Paris manager of the firm, there were no festivities. But Madame Erard marked the event by an act of regal generosity, distributing 60,000 francs among her workmen and employees, in proportions varying according to the period each one had been in her employment. Sebastian Erhadt, the founder of the firm, was born at Strasburg, April 5, 1752, the eldest of four children of an upholsterer in that city. He was originally apprenticed to a draughtsman, and it is narrated that he ascribed much of the success which attended him in after life to his theoretical knowledge of drawing and of the principles of mechanics. His father died poor, and Sebastian, at the age of sixteen, was thrown upon his own resources. He tramped to Paris, and entered the employment of a harpsichord maker there. He was a persevering young man, but it is narrated of him that “he was too inquisitive, and wanted to know too much.” However, his employer having received an order for a harpsichord, and being unable to execute it himself, entrusted it to young Erhadt, and when it was finished he, after the fashion too often adopted by eminent and other pianoforte manufacturers of the present day, affixed his own name to it. Questions, however, arose as to the mechanism, which the bogus maker was unable to explain, and the fact that the real maker was Sebastian Erhadt was disclosed.

The celebrity of the mechanical harpsichord soon ran around the fashionable world of Paris, and young Sebastian, then 25 years of age, attracted the notice of the Duchess of Villeroi. The lady herself had some originality of invention, and she established for Erhadt, whose name was forthwith Gallicized to Erard, a factory in her chateau. It was here that Erard manufactured the first pianoforte ever made in France, it being, according to Fetis, a square, with two unisons and five octaves, upon the plan of the pianofortes which had been imported from England and Germany. This was in 1777, and from it the celebrity of Erard may lie said to date. His orders for pianos largely increasing, he sent to Strasburg for his brother Jean Baptiste, and the two, in July, 1780, established in the Rue de Bourbon, in the Faubourg St. Germain, the factory which soon became one of the most celebrated in Europe. It was the centenary of this establishment that was observed last month.

Sebastian Erard now busied himself with new inventions, and among other things he devised for the voice of the queen, which was of such limited compass that almost every piece was too high for her, a movable keyboard. Some writers aver that the movable keyboard was old even at that time (1787), but it is almost identical with other inventions of a similar sort which have been patented even during later years. The idea was simply to change the position of the keyboard so that the hammers might strike a higher or lower string, thus transposing “a semitone, a whole tone, or even a minor third.” For eleven years the factory of Erards flourished in Paris, until the revolution broke out. The Erards were forced to flee to England, and in 1793 they established their London factory. On October 17^th, 1794, Sebastian Erard took out his first English patent, entitled “Two methods for the escapement of the hammer and an arrangement for striking one two or three strings at pleasure by a side movement of the damper rail. Harmonic octave produced by mechanism which pressed on the string exactly in the centre.” At that time, although the pianoforte was known to have been used at a concert by Dibdin as far back as 1767 (the concert program now being framed, is in the office of Messrs. John Broadwood & Sons), it was really in its infancy. Backers, Broadwood, ans Stodart were then the great pioneers of pianoforte manufacture, for although the firm of Kirkman was in existence long prior, its industry was exclusively confined to the manufacture of harpsichords. In 1796, after the Reign of Terror, Erard returned to Paris, continuing, however, his London factory. In that year he made his first grand horizontal piano on the English model, which, according to Fetis, he continued using till 1808. He had in the meantime, in 1801, patented in London an invention “to render the touch either hard or soft to any degree, at the election of the player.”

In 1808 Sebastian Erard finally discarded the English action, and on September 14^th of that year he patented the first ideas of his famous repetition action. It is the fourth article of the patent (the previous articles relating to stopping the piano strings so as to give a semitone above, and to plate improvements), and it runs as follows: - “In the piano an improvement is introduced into the movement in connection with the hammer rail, which affords the power of giving repeated strokes without missing or failure by very small angular motions of the key itself.” The specification with drawings is printed, and it may also be found in the seventh of the Rolls Chapel Reports. In an article in the Dictionary of Musicians, Mr. A.J. Hipkins refers to a patent for the repetition grand piano action, taken out by Sebastian Erard in 1809, but no such patent is in the records of our patent office. Mr. Hipkins further states that a feature of this 1809 patent was the inverted bridge or upward bearing at the wrest plank bridge of the piano, since invariably adopted. But as we can find no record of the facts, we must leave the responsibility of the statement to Mr. Hipkins. It is very certain, however, that the invention of the repetition action had occupied Sebastian Erard from the time that Louis XVI conferred the brevet upon his firm to the date of the actual fruition of his ideas. Sebastian, however, well nigh seventy years of age, felt himself too old to carry his invention out, and he confided it to his nephew Pierre, the son of his brother, Jean Baptiste Erard. Pierre Erard was born in 1796, and at the age of 25, in 1821, he describing himself as of “Great Marlborough street, musical instrument maker,” took out the celebrated repetition action patent, dated December 22^nd of that year. The preamble of the patent declares that Pierre Erard, “in consequence of communications made to him by a certain foreigner residing abroad, is in possession of an invention of ‘Improvements in pianofortes and other keyed instruments’, namely, a new and improves application of mechanism to the escapement.” The patent is briefly described in the official abridgements as follows: -

“The present invention introduces four improvements, which require simply the depression of the key. (1) A spring so contrived that its strength is made to support the weight of the hammer after it has made its blow and has escaped from its support upon the sticker. (2) A contact is brought about between the hammer, near the centre upon which it moves, and the spring or lever connected and supported by such spring, in order to prepare the fall of the hammer when its escapement takes place. (3) A lever, by moving on its centre, effects the escapement of the sticker from under the hammer. (4) A piece so contrived with an adjusting screw as to catch the hammer in its fall, and to stop or hold it as long as the key is kept entirely down, so as to prevent the possibility of its rebounding to the wires again, while it releases it again with the smallest rise of the finger end of the key.”

This practically ended the connection of Sebastian Erard with the firm which he had founded. The labor of his early years told upon even a robust constitution, and after suffering many years from disease, he died at his chateau, La Muette, near Passy, August 5^th, 1831. His funeral was a grand one, attended by most of the leading artists of Paris.

M. Pierre Erard now took up the active direction of the business, and he proved himself as prolific in invention as his uncle before him. Following rapidly upon the invention of the repetition action in 1821, M. Pierre Erard, on January 5^th, 1825, patented the system of fixed metal bracing, which was widely adopted, and is even used in our days. This invention (emanating originally from Sebastian Erard) also included a new contrivance for the check. In February, 1827, a further patent, also the idea of Sebastian Erard, and improving the action and the check with a new method of hinging the hammer, was granted,  while in 1835 the repetition action patent of 1821 was extended for seven years, on the ground of the great utility of the patent and of the losses at first sustained in working it. In September, 1840, M. Pierre Erard took out his first original patent of a new action for oblique pianofortes, the patent also including a ball and socket centre of motion for the finger key and an X stand to obtain equal support for all the four feet of horizontal pianos. The last two points of the invention have, we believe, since been abandoned. Another patent was granted to M. Pierre Erard in September, 1850, the ideas including the application of wood to metal instead of metal to wood, a tuning screw for each wire, new pedal keys, and especially a wrest plank wholly of metal. Another patent was taken out in November, 1851, by which the strings were laid on or against the sound board instead of on the bridge of the sound board, the idea proposing to obviate the pressure which tends to press away the sound board.

M. Pierre Erard died at Passy in 1855, and the important business has since been carried on by his widow, Madame Erard, assisted by a competent London and Paris staff. In February, 1862, Mr. E.G. Bruzaud, the manager of the London house, patented a contrivance by which two dampers were used for each note.

It may be mentioned that the invention in 1838 of the harmonic bar is claimed for M. Pierre Erard by Dr. Oscar Paul in the Geschichte des Claviers, published in Leipzig in 1688. The house of Erard has also always been celebrated for its harps. . . Harp patents were also taken out by Sebastian Erard in 1802, 1808, (damping) 1810,. . . and by Pierre Erard in 1822 and 1835.