Blake Piano Company in Newburyport: A Sign of the Times

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Did you know that in 1910, more Americans had a piano in their home than had a bathtub? Read on…

This c. 1906 trade card from a competitor of the Blake Piano Company is in the collection of the Museum of Old Newbury.

On September 13, the Museum of Old Newbury welcomed 60 members to New Acquisitions for Old Newbury, the 2023 Member Reception and Annual Meeting. While the formal annual meeting part of the evening is a necessary part of our governance, we try to liven things up with a review of some of our favorite acquisitions from the previous year. These come in all shapes and sizes, and this year, one of the highlights was a recent purchase – a c. 1910 sign from the Blake Piano Company in Market Square. 

Photo courtesy of Eric Jay Dolin



The Blake Piano Company was established in Boston in 1869 by composer Charles D. Blake and owned by his son after his death in 1903. Charles D. Blake, (1847-1903) was a prolific composer, pianist, and organist, credited with writing “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” among hundreds of other popular songs. His sheet music publishing company Chas D. Blake & Co. was just a few doors down from the Blake Piano Company headquarters at 564 Washington Street in Boston. 

Charles Blake’s biggest hit, Rock-a-Bye Baby, appeared in the Songs of the Old Homestead collection of 1887.

In 1907, the Blake Piano Company opened one of their many branch locations in Newburyport at 22 Washington Street, moving to 41 Market Square in 1909. Carrying piano brands such as Krell, Shoninger, Ludwig, and Schubert, Blake Piano Company offered the instruments on monthly installment plans, with the option to pause your payments if you were out of work. This made pianos affordable to working families, including members of immigrant groups who had established themselves in Newburyport and were eager to acquire the accessories of middle-class stability.

Advertisements for the Blake Piano Company used language that would have been familiar to working families, referencing the widespread social, economic, and political reform movements that characterized the Progressive Era. Blake Piano Company had come to Newburyport to “smash the high-priced piano combine that has ruled with an iron arm unmolested for years”. They expected to do brisk business with customers who were “sick of paying fancy prices for Pianos, then on top of that the Interest.” At a time when monopolies and corruption were being “smashed” on a national level, owning a Blake’s piano was a way to prove that you “knew the trick” and would not be exploited by ruthless profiteers. 

A fascinating study of piano advertisements in New York’s Yiddish newspapers from the same time period offers a glimpse into working-class and immigrant “piano culture” across the country, represented in a small way in our Blake Piano Company sign.

Between 1903 and 1915, piano production in the United States increased 6.2 times faster than population growth, and “prices declined steadily, putting cheap parlor uprights within the reach of wage-earners”. In 1909 alone, 364,545 pianos were sold, many of these to immigrant families who were eager to elevate their family’s social status. Pianos, after all, represented two things in short supply to many working families – leisure time and a stable (and roomy) living space. A piano in the home represented a certain amount of permanence – they suggested that their owners were not moving too often and had disposable income to pursue the arts. Having an instrument in the home was proof of culture and education. In New York’s Jewish community, and likely in Newburyport as well, it gave young women a competitive edge with suitors.

There were also the lessons to consider - Blake Piano Company offered piano lessons with local instructors, bundled with, or separate from their piano sales.



HAVE YOU BOUGHT YOUR PIANO?, read another Blake Piano advertisement that ran throughout the year. After all, “every up-to-date house now has a piano”.

This advertisement ran in the Newburyport Daily News from May to November, 1910.

Blake Piano Company seems to have left Newburyport by 1912, and the piano craze began to ebb by the advent of World War I in 1917. This sign captures a moment in time in Newburyport’s rich history, and in American history, and we are so pleased to preserve it here. 

Upcoming MOON Events

History and Cultures of the Great Marsh

Monday, October 23, 2023, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm

The Governor's Academy

Join us for the History & Cultures of the Great Marsh Conference on Monday, October 23, 2023 at The Governor's Academy. This is an in-person event with limited capacity - get your tickets soon! Museum of Old Newbury members and members of Essex County Greenbelt: $30, General Admission, $45. Add-on field trips an additional $10-15.

Topics include:

"The Great Marsh, Newbury, and the Indigenous Worlds of the Merrimack River Valley System and Beyond."

"Contention in the Commons: The Open Field Land System in 17th Century Newbury"

"Slavery and Memory in the Great Marsh"

"Splendour in the Grass: Art Inspired by the Great Marsh"

"Agriculture, Fishing, Hunting, & Conservation in the Great Marsh"

Optional field trips include:

1. Bird watching with Laura Vehring in the Parker River marsh surrounding The Governor’s Academy
2. Guided tour of Plum Island’s cranberry bogs
3. Guided tour of the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm & its salt marsh hay production, past & present.



Attendees will also be invited to tour the Academy's brand-new Alfond Coastal Research Center (completed just this summer), a state-of-the-art marine study facility overlooking the south bank of the Parker River near Thurlow's Bridge.

Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp

...a blog by Kristen Fehlhaber, Assistant Director

Watchtower overlooking honor roll of enlisted soldiers at Minidoka National Historic Site

Words used during the 1940s to describe Japanese relocation were often misleading and intended to sound benign or even helpful to those individuals who were being forcibly removed from their homes. Terms like “evacuation” and “exclusion” masked the reality of forced removal. Some Japanese Americans today prefer using the terms “concentration camp” and “incarceration” to “relocation camp” and “internment.” (The word “internment” should be used to describe legally permissible detention of enemy aliens, and therefore does not properly describe the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, most of whom were US citizens.)

- US Holocaust Memorial Museum

A few weeks ago, as part of this year’s conference of American Association for State and Local History, I had the opportunity to visit Minidoka, one of 10 concentration camps that the United States built to incarcerate Japanese-American citizens during World War II. 

The Market Street Baptist Church in Amesbury announced a project for "writing to Japanese-American girls in concentration camps.” Newburyport Daily News and Herald, November 4, 1942. 

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of Minidoka before. Manzanar, yes; Heart Mountain in Wyoming, yes; the "assembly center" in the stables of the Tanforan Race Track just south of San Francisco, yes. If I’d grown up in Seattle, I’d probably know of Minidoka already; over 13,000 Japanese Americans from Alaska, Washington and Oregon were at Minidoka during the war, with 9,000 there at any one time.   

Top: A park ranger showing the map of Minidoka. There were 44 blocks of 12 barracks each. Bottom: Minidoka under construction in 1942. Photo: Francis Stewart, U.S. Dept. of Interior

A bus with 30 conference attendees left downtown Boise at 8am sharp. It would take 2.5 hours to get to the site. Minidoka is managed by the National Park Service and though they had closed for the season on Labor Day, they opened up the doors to welcome us.  

My first impression of Minidoka was, “Where is everything?” I had imagined something like Mauthausen, a German concentration camp that I visited in Austria, with many original structures. But Minidoka was almost completely erased after the war. The land was given to returning GIs along with two barracks each, to use as they wanted. The park site is mostly empty; agricultural land can be seen in the distance.  

Top: Barracks Bottom: Dining hall showing the tar paper that covered all the buildings.

The only two buildings that can be visited – a barracks and a dining hall - were moved back to the location when the memorial was created. The large root cellar used to store the food they grew is falling into the earth and a rebuilt watch-tower stands over it all. We were told that the toilets (no longer there) had no walls separating them. They are remembered as one of the worst indignities of life here, leading some women put paper bags over their heads when they used the facilities.  

The Japanese term gaman, “Bearing the Unbearable,” came up a number of times. And yet, there was pride at Minidoka, too. During the war, as their sons were drafted into the US Army, they erected an honor roll with their names. This has been reconstructed, adding the names of women that volunteered as well. Many of the men fought in the all-Nisei 442^nd Infantry Regiment that rescued the “Lost Battalion” in the Vosges Forest.  

Interpretive sign in front of the Honor Roll today; A separate plaque for the incarcerees that gave their lives in World War II.

When Minidoka was officially closed in late 1945, the newly free were given $25 and a bus or train ticket. Many delayed leaving, as they had nowhere to go. An estimated $3.64 billion (in 2022 dollars) of wealth had been lost when property and businesses were lost or sold at discount prices at the beginning of the war. 

A few days earlier, filmmaker Emiko Omori addressed the conference by video and told us that of all the people in her 1999 film*, only she and her sister are still living. I am grateful for everyone who fought to preserve Minidoka and who are telling its story today. And it makes me wonder - what stories aren’t we collecting? What history is on the verge of being lost?  

*If you want to learn more, Omori’s moving documentary, “Rabbit in the Moon” is available through Kanopy for free with your library card.  

Ten Center Street Key Lime Pie

This beloved restaurant was a community favorite! Cosy, old, and Dickensian, it was a perfect haunt for a chilly fall day. The bake time on this recipe seems short, but we are copying it as it was printed in the Sept-Oct 2002 Five Cent Savings Bank newsletter, "Bank Notes." Enjoy!

Crust

1 1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup coconut

6 teaspoons melted butter

Combine and press into a 9" springform pan. Bake at 350F for 5 minutes until golden. Cool on a rack.

Filling

9 egg yolks

42 oz. sweetened condensed milk

Zest of 3 limes

1 1/2 cups key lime juice

Juice from limes used for zest

Whisk egg yolks and condensed milk until smooth. Add key lime juice and juice from zested limes and stir. Pour into prepared crust. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. Cool on rack for 20 minutes. Chill 2 hours.

Click the image to do the puzzle

A trade card advertising the Everett Piano Company, founded in 1883 in Boston. Postcard from 1907 at the height of piano-mania.