Sohmer Piano, Now Luxury Houses

Here in Ravenswood, just south of Astoria along the East River, the skyline is dominated by the massive Con Ed “Big Allis” power plant and Ravenswood Houses, but a walk though its narrow streets reveals surprising remnants of old-time Queens. A Steinway competitor, Sohmer Piano, constructed this factory on Vernon Boulevard and 31st Avenue in 1887, a multilevel factory building complete with clock tower. Its original copper roof was replaced with tin and then painted green some years ago.

I first encountered the building several years ago when it was still occupied by the Adirondack Chair Company and spoke with John Pupa, Vice President of Operations for Adirondack. He said that Adirondack no longer heated the building with coal but it still maintained its old Hewes and Phillips coal-burning oven and took coal deliveries.

From Made in New Jersey by John Cunningham (1954): 

Hewes & Phillips were Newark’s major machine maker throughout the nineteenth century. Both partners, J. L. Hewes & J. M. Phillips, served as apprentices under Seth Boyden. They ‘struck out on their own’ in Newark in 1846 & by 1874 employed 400 men. They turned out products valued at more than $300,000 annually (a huge figure for 1874). Hewes & Phillips achieved worldwide markets; their steam engines, boilers & mining machinery went directly from the big plant beside the Passaic River into holds of steamers anchored at the H & P dock. Long trainloads of machinery left Hewes & Phillips headed for the gold & silver mines of the West.

It’s not the only piano factory converted to luxury in NYC of late — I was taken by surprise to discover that the fortress-like, hulking Steinway factory on Ditmars Boulevard and 45th Street in Astoria became the Pistilli Grand Manor, and the clock-towered Estey Piano building and its distinctive clock tower in the Bronx’ Mott Haven became residential in the early 2000s.

Sohmer pianos? They are now manufactured in Korea.

Chiseled into the corners are 31st Avenue’s old name, Jamaica (Avenue), and Vernon Boulevard’s former name, Boulevard.

Kevin Walsh’s site is Forgotten New York. His book of the same name is also available.