The Straube Piano Company (1895–1937) and its successor Straube Pianos Inc. (1937–1949) were American piano manufacturers of uprights, grands, players, and reproducing grands.
Straube was active during the golden age of piano making, roughly 1890 to 1920, when pianos had few competitors for home entertainment. The company's own golden era ran from about 1904 to 1935, when it flourished as an innovator in the player piano business and grew into a high-volume piano producer.
Straube executives and plant superintendents, particularly E.R. Jacobson (president) and William G. Betz (superintendent and inventor/innovator), held leadership roles in industry organizations. The company produced its best pianos under the Straube name, and its lower-priced pianos under the Hammond, Gilmore, and Woodward brands. All of the models were distributed in the US, and the player models internationally as well, particularly in Australia.
History
1890s: early years The Straube Piano Company was the outgrowth of Van Matre & Straube (aka Straube & Van Matre), a partnership formalized in February 1895 by Williard Naramore Van Matre, Sr. (1851–1939), and William Straube (né Straub; 1857–1928).
That same month, Van Matre and Straube leased a factory together near Chicago at Downers Grove, Illinois, on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, at the present intersection of Warren and Forest Avenues. Their original wareroom was at 24 Adams Street, Chicago.
Straube's first piano was completed in June 1895 at that shared factory. (W.N. Van Matre & Co. was a music dealer at 105 State Street in Rockford, Illinois.) Around July 1896, Straube purchased Van Matre's share in the business, and the partnership was dissolved. Straube continued in business under his own name.
Different founding years have been asserted for Straube's company. In 1907, Straube Piano Company executives publicly observed 1895 as their founding year. However, in 1911, Alfred Dolge published an influential reference book, Pianos and Their Makers, in which he gave 1878 as the founding year. The December 19, 1914, issue of Music Trade Review began using the 1878 founding date, and at some point Straube Piano began casting the numerals "1878" into the iron frames of their instruments. Straube Piano in 1924 cited 1879 as their founding year. In 1996, another author provided 1859 as the founding year.
William Straube (1857–1923), who was an investor rather than a piano expert, incorporated Straube Piano Company in 1897 as an Illinois entity.
James (Jim) Francis Broderick (19 August 1854 Philadelphia – 17 November 1920 Chicago) became president on January 1, 1898, and served in that role until March 1911. Before joining Straube Piano, Broderick had been a traveling salesman for Steger & Company and the B. Shoninger Co.
1900s By 1901, William Straube had sold his interest and signed a 5-year non-compete agreement. But in 1901, Straube, his two brothers, Herman Charles Straube (1867–1921) and Martin Straube, Jr. (1869–1934), and an associate, Charles Jacobsen (no relation to the Jacobsons of Straube Piano Company), formed another piano manufacturing company and leased the Club Block in Downers Grove. The Straube Piano Company challenged and won an injunction on December 16, 1901, in Cook County Circuit Court forbidding the Straubes and Jacobsen from using the Straube name in the manufacturing of pianos.
In 1904, the Straube Piano Company moved its manufacturing and executive offices from Chicago to a custom-built factory in the city of Hammond in Indiana's Calumet Region. Sited on five acres served by both the Monon and the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville railways, the 3-story facility, with a basement, had of factory space. The exterior of the building was Oehlmacher brick, a light gray brick made in Michigan City, Indiana. The factory was of mill construction. The main structure was 160 by 50 feet, two stories high. The engine house was 50 by 35 feet, detached, and the boiler house was 60 by 45 feet and detached. The Monon dry kiln was 35 by 65 feet and held 20,000 feet of lumber. Equipped with automatic fire doors and fire walls, it had standpipes throughout the structure with separate hose attachments and concrete floors in the basement engine and boiler rooms. At full capacity, the new factory required 200 employees and could produce 3,000 finished pianos a year.
Straube Piano introduced its first player piano in November 1909.
The year 1909 was the peak of piano sales in the United States; sales totaled nearly 364,545 pianos, according to the National Piano Manufacturers Association. (Just over a century later, in 2011, sales totaled about 41,000 pianos, 120,000 digital pianos, and 1.1 million keyboards, according to Music Trades magazine.)
E.R. Jacobson, president Ernfrid (Ernest) Reinholdt Jacobson (25 December 1877 Gothenburg, Sweden – 19 June 1976 Chicago) – had begun at Straube in August 1898 as a bookkeeper and stenographer. After initially purchasing a small interest in the company, Jacobson became secretary, and continued to acquire stock from time to time.
In March 1911, Jacobson purchased the entire interest of the remaining partner and became president. He appointed his brothers as executives: Charles (Carl) Herman Jacobson Thorby (1875–1946), vice-president; and James Frithiof Jacobson (1885–1968), secretary, who all became owners and were actively involved with the further development of the business.
Presto-Times contributor Fred E. Cooper has written that Jacobson took the Straube Piano Company from ordinary piano manufacturer to one of the most successful contenders in the high-quality piano field.
In 1913, construction began on the third addition to the original Straube factory erected in 1904 at 205 Manila Avenue. On January 30, 1930, the Hammond City Council enacted dozens of street name changes – including the change from Manila Avenue to Wildwood Street. The architect was J.T. Hutton (Joseph T. Hutton; 1861–1932) and the contractor was Mahlon Abraham Dickover (1856–1932)
In late 1914 or early 1915, the Straube Piano Company was incorporated in Indiana by the Jacobsons and Thorby with $150,000 () capital stock. Around that time, the factory was producing about 12 finished pianos a day, for an annual production worth about three-quarters of a million dollars a year () and employed about 150 men for an annual payroll of about $125,000 ().
Around 1916, the Straube Piano Company was manufacturing ten to twelve finished units a day.
1920s The company reached a peak monthly production volume in November 1922, surpassing its previous monthly high in March 1920. It has been estimated that, of the some 360,000 pianos produced in America in 1909, 56% were players.
In 1925, construction began on the fifth and largest addition to the original Straube factory. The architect was J.T. Hutton & Son, the son being William Sturgeon Hutton (1890–1975). The structure was four stories with a basement. The addition was devoted largely to the manufacture of grand and reproducing grand pianos."Begin New Addition to Big Piano Plant", Gary Evening Times, Vol. 18, No. 209, February 23, 1925, pg. 1
In June 1925, Straube moved into the new plant. The new plant added 70,000 square feet of manufacturing space and provided a suite of new executive offices. The total floor-space, including the addition, was about a hundred and sixty thousand square feet. The new space was especially designed for a new unit that could produce 2,500 Straube grands a year to meet demand. William G. Betz – Straube's plant superintendent since 1917, piano design engineer, and inventor who was highly regarded by the industry – had spent several years perfecting the construction and design of the new Straube grands. Straube also hired William David McIlwrath (né McIlwraith; 1872–1931), a veteran piano factory superintendent and piano engineer with years of experience in the production of grands, to take charge a department in the new unit. McIlwrath had been the manufacturing superintendent of Jesse French & Sons Piano Co. of New Castle, Indiana, since February 16, 1920, and had been employed there since 1913. McIlwrath learned the profession in Canada, having been associated with many of the leading factories in the East.
In 1929, Straube began producing radios.
Sales of pianos and player pianos, industry-wide, began to slip in the early 1920s, due partly to the rising popularity of radio as an alternative for home entertainment and due partly to the rising popularity of automobiles, which cost about the same as premium Straube pianos ($325; ). And, like pianos, automobiles were commonly purchased on installment. In 1925, 80% of pianos sold by the retail trade were done so on installment plans. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and into the Great Depression, sales declined further and Straube began to struggle financially.
1930s In 1930, Straube was using the advertising firm of Lamport, Fox & Co., Irvin Sylvester Dolk (1891–1981), ad executive of South Bend, Indiana.
Struggling to survive, the Straube Piano Company sold its Hammond factory in 1931 to the J.L. Metz Furniture Co. for $125,000 () and leased back a large portion of the building. In May 1934, the Straube Piano Company went into a friendly receivership. Roy Francis McPharlin (1893–1980) was appointed as receiver. On January 4, 1935, McPharlin distributed a "first and final" dividend of 8/10 of 1 cent of one dollar (i.e., 86¢ for $100) to the creditors. During the summer of 1935, the company reorganized. By then, it was still producing pianos, but occupied only a portion of the factory it once owned. The remainder of the plant was occupied by J.L. Metz Furniture Co. In 1935, the Straube Piano Company was being operated by the Fidelity Security Company, John Leonard Keilman (1867–1946), president. Fidelity Security was the finance arm of Straube Piano – dealing in piano paper and other securities.
When Straube went into receivership, all of its officers departed, including president Jacobson, president; C.H.J. Thorby, vice-president; and Alfred Theodore Schuldes (1892–1981), secretary-treasurer. Also, in 1935, William G. Betz (1871–1957), longtime superintendent with over 50 patents, left the company. In the interim, after the departure of Betz and before the appointment of Charles Henry Bartolomee as plant superintendent, Alvin Detloff Meyer (1879–1970), a Straube purchasing agent and longtime employee, took charge of manufacturing.
Around June 1936, Straube Piano Company moved its offices from the First Trust Building in Hammond to the Straube factory at 5049 Columbia Avenue in Hammond. And its board of directors elected Lemuel (Lem) Kline (1868–1945) as secretary-treasurer.
On January 19, 1937, the Straube Piano Company was adjudicated bankrupt in United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division. In March 1937, the receiver for the Straube Piano Company sold all remaining assets for $4,655 () to individuals who planned to continue the business. The dividend amount is not known. The assets consisted of the name and goodwill of the business, unfinished pianos – about twenty in process of construction – thirty piano cases unassembled, and various supplies of finished and unfinished materials and parts used in the construction of pianos, along with piano strings and wire and other parts for piano manufacturing.
Reorganization A new company was formed in Indiana on March 27, 1937, as Straube Pianos Inc. located at 5049 Columbia Avenue and production of Straube pianos resumed in the leased portion of the Hammond factory that the former company once owned. The 1937 executives were: Walter Ernst Schrage (1912–1982), president, whose father, William Ernst Schrage (1884–1941), was president of the Bank of Whiting, Hammond, Indiana