Steinert Building and Steinert Hall

A landmark in the history of the music industry in the nation, the gray brick and limestone Italian Renaissance Revival Steinert Building is the headquarters of one of the country's finest piano distributors. Founded in 1860, Steinert and Co., opened a Boston office in 1883 and moved into its own substantial building in 1896. Here, three floors, set within a monumental limestone arcade, provided display space for major piano lines, including Steinway and Co., and Boston's own Chickering and Sons (see SE28). Three of the levels above contained teaching and practice rooms, and there are carved cartouches of string and wind instruments between the fourth-through sixth-story windows. Below ground, the 350-seat Steinert Hall, an acoustically superb, Adamesque concert space, completed the building. The success of this operation attracted the construction of other buildings for piano dealers, including the adjacent Vose Building (1899, 158–160 Boylston) and 154–156 Boylston (1925, Little and Russell), for a time the home of P. A. Stark Piano Company, earning this section of Boylston Street the sobriquet Piano Row.