Sohmer & Co.

Sohmer & Co. was a piano manufacturing company founded in New York City in 1872. Sohmer & Co. marketed the first modern baby grand piano, and also manufactured pianos with aliquot stringing and bridge agraffes, as well as Cecilian "all-inside" player pianos and Welte-Mignon-Licensee reproducing pianos. Sohmer pianos were owned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and composers Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. Sohmer is now a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Music Corporation in Korea.

Hugo Sohmer (1845-1913) was born as the son of a physician in Dunningen, a village near Rottweil, on the foothills of the Black Forest, Germany. He was educated in literary and scientific subjects as well as music and the piano, and emigrated to New York City in 1863, where he apprenticed as a piano-builder in Schuetze & Ludolff's factory. He spent two years travelling in Europe continuing to study piano making, and returned to New York in 1870. In 1872 he founded Sohmer & Company, in partnership with Joseph Kuder (April 26, 1831 - July 24, 1913), a pianomaker originally from Vienna who had worked in New York since 1853, first for Steinway & Sons, and later Lighte, Newton & Bradburys as foreman, before working for Marschall & Mittauer, as well as their successor J. H. Boernhoeft.

Sohmer & Co. manufactured and sold pianos at Marschall & Mittauer's former address at 149 East 14th street. They expanded to 155 East 14th street and added Brooklyn showrooms by 1879, and in 1883 moved all but their warerooms to 143 East 23rd Street, formerly the factory of reed organ manufacturers Carhart & Needham. In 1885, the facilities at the corner of 14th st. and 3rd ave. were altered according to plans drawn by Berger & Baylies, and in 1886 purchased a large waterfront plot on Jamaica Avenue, Long Island—near Steinway & Sons' new factory—and erected a six story factory, also designed by Berger & Baylies. The factory was expanded with a six-story addition completed in 1907, and in 1919 erected a six story office and showroom at 31 West 57th Street, on New York's "Piano Row".

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