Boston's Piano Row: The Forgotten Steinert Hall
Boston’s music history is dense, rich, and full of fun little surprises. Even today, hidden secrets still remain. But one area in particular, Boston’s Piano Row District, is an exceptionally interesting sliver of the city.
Located just around the corner from the Theater District and now a part of the bustling Emerson College campus, Piano Row’s history dates back to the late 1800s. The district encompasses two blocks of buildings facing the Boston Common. The name stems from the numerous piano showrooms, music businesses, and theaters that inhabited the area over the years. One such piano showroom, M. Steinert and Sons, still remains standing there on Boylston Street to this day.
Creating A CENTER FOR FINE CULTURE in Boston
Morris Steinert, a musically-inclined German immigrant, came to the US in 1850. He mostly taught private piano lessons to the area elites’ children, but soon switched his focus to instrument sales. Morris opened an M. Steinert and Sons showroom in Boston in 1880.
Steinert developed a healthy business relationship with famed piano makers, Steinway & Sons, and began selling Steinway pianos around New England. In 1883, the company’s headquarters relocated to the Boston showroom, where Alexander, one of Morris’s nine children, took control. Alexander had a six-story building erected in 1896, known as Steinert Hall, which housed a piano showroom and offices above. The building, located at 162 Boylston Street, still stands today and remains owned by the Steinert family.
But the main draw of Steinert Hall was an ornate underground performance auditorium with exceptional acoustics, capable of holding up to 650 patrons. Alexander Steinert wanted to attract more people to the showroom, and also give elite musicians a space to showcase their abilities. But the only way to block out the street noise was to place the auditorium underground. So, four stories beneath the street, the finest musicians in the area and abroad flocked to perform and attend concerts at Steinert Hall. By the early 1910s, the concert hall was considered by many to be the center of music and fine arts culture in not just Boston, but all of New England.
In addition to selling pianos, Steinert manufactured pianos of their own and eventually had two factories and 42 showrooms operating around New England and New York. But the stock market crash of 1929 had a devastating impact on the business, forcing them to close both factories and all but three showrooms. Despite the odds, Steinert survived the Great Depression.
Why Steinert Hall closed
In 1942, the infamous Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire resulted in immediate changes to Boston’s fire codes. Structures were required to have multiple exits to the outdoors. Steinert Hall had only one exit from the underground auditorium, meaning it no longer kept to code. Steinert attempted to bring the theater up to the new specifications, but the challenge of installing additional exits to a space located four stories underground was prohibitively expensive and difficult. The theater has been abandoned since then, used only as occasional storage for the store above. All of the original art and ornamentation remains, but has suffered significant water damage and has fallen into a dilapidated state, trapped in the 1940s while the world around it continues to evolve.
Since then, the concert hall has almost become an urban legend, its existence called into question since so few can access the space. But public curiosity has led to people showing genuine interest in restoring the auditorium and opening it up to performances again. The cost of renovations would likely exceed $6 million, but efforts are underway to raise the money needed to restore the cultural icon (according to a 2019 article on Steinert Hall). Hopefully, Steinert Hall will return to its former glory and rejoin the ranks of other iconic Boston venues.
Want to develop the skills to someday perform in a concert hall? Sign up for piano lessons in Boston to begin the journey! We look forward to helping you achieve your musical aspirations at Loudlands Music Lab!