In Sunday’s (7/21) City Room blog at the New York Times, James Barron writes about Piano Row, a stretch of West 58th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. “Piano Row was, and is, a fast walk from other points on a pianist’s compass, like the Steinway & Sons showroom on West 57th Street. And once, before its bankruptcies in the 1990s, Baldwin had its showroom at the end of Piano Row. … In June, Steinway sold its building and plans to move out by the end of 2014. … On Sunday, one of the piano stores [on the block] will leave the little building it has long occupied. Carl Demler, the owner of the building and the store—Beethoven Pianos —said he was selling the building to the Extell Development Corporation…. He also said that he expected to move Beethoven Pianos into another storefront on Piano Row…. The writer Perri Knize discovered Beethoven Pianos in 2001, when she was looking for the perfect piano, a hunt that ended with a purchase at Beethoven and a book describing the hunt, ‘Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey.’ She said … that Beethoven had ‘the most diverse assemblage of pianos anywhere.’ ”
Posted July 23, 2013
