1878 Steinway Model B Grand Piano
One of the first Model Bs on Steinway’s continuous bent rim · Full restoration planned
Serial number 40110
Finish: Ebony
$85,000
Photos coming soon.
About This Piano
This Steinway Model B in ebony, serial number 40110, was built in 1878 at Steinway & Sons’ New York factory. It is coming into our shop for a full restoration — the works — and is currently awaiting commissioning, so the restoration has not started yet. Photos and a detailed restoration list will be added as the work gets underway.
1878 was the year Steinway introduced its lettered Model A and Model B. The Model B became the firm’s classic mid-size concert grand — the instrument Steinway still calls the “perfect piano.” Together with the Model A introduced the same year, the Model B brought in a set of improvements — continuous bent rim, duplex scale, cupola plate, tubular metallic action frame, overstrung scale, and related patents — that nearly every current manufacturer has since adopted. Steinway and almost every other maker still build on those design changes, which is why these 1878 A and B pianos are fairly called among the first truly modern pianos. This example is among the very first Model Bs built on the continuous bent rim.
Like every Model B of its era, it has 85 keys (A0–A7). We have confirmed at the bench that it has a continuous bent rim (no corner strips) and a capo bar in the treble.
For reference, a new Steinway Model B in ebony polish lists at about $146,900.
Why This B Matters
Steinway built this Model B in New York in 1878, the year the firm introduced its lettered Model A and Model B and moved its smaller grands onto a radically new case. On May 21, 1878, C. F. Theodore Steinway was granted U.S. Patent No. 204,106 for a grand-piano case whose inner and outer rims are made of long strips of wood glued together and bent around a form into one continuous rim. Steinway still builds every grand it makes that way today. According to Steinway production records compiled by Roy Kehl and David Kirkland, the first bent-rim Model Bs left the factory in November 1878 at serial numbers 39,692 and 39,775. Serial 40110 follows only a few hundred numbers later, which makes this one of the very first Model Bs built on the continuous rim — a fact we’ve confirmed on this piano at the bench, along with its capo bar.
It also carries the other advances Steinway had patented in the 1860s and ’70s: Henry Steinway Jr.’s overstrung grand scale (1859), Theodore Steinway’s duplex scale (1872) and full cast-iron “cupola” plate, the brass tubular metallic action frame (1868–69), and Albert Steinway’s patented sostenuto pedal (1874). Those improvements have since been copied by nearly every current manufacturer; Steinway and almost everybody else still incorporate the design changes first introduced in the Models A and B. Fully restored, this piano is a playable piece of the moment the modern grand took shape — among the first truly modern pianos ever made.
Place in History
When this Steinway Model B left the New York factory in 1878, Rutherford B. Hayes was President of the United States, and the country was in the thick of the Gilded Age. It was a remarkable year for invention: Thomas Edison patented the phonograph on February 19, the world’s first commercial telephone exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut, the Remington No. 2 typewriter introduced the shift key, Pope Manufacturing began building the Columbia high-wheel bicycle and set off an American cycling craze, and electric lights were first used at London’s Palace of Westminster. Abroad, the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin redrew the map of the Balkans, and Cleopatra’s Needle was raised beside the Thames. In music, Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore opened in London for a 571-performance run, Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky completed his Fourth Symphony and Violin Concerto, and soprano Marie Selika Williams became the first African American artist to perform at the White House.
Restoration Plan
This piano will receive a full restoration — the works — in our shop by Registered Piano Technician Trevor Nelson. The restoration is awaiting commissioning and has not started yet. We’ll post the detailed restoration list and progress photos as the work moves forward.
$85,000. Please contact us for more information, or to discuss the restoration.
See It in Person
Visit our piano gallery in Lafayette, Colorado, to see this early Model B. Call (303) 521-3722 or contact us to set up a time.