This last plant was located in Memphis,TN. In 1983 Aeolian was sold to a former president of Steinway. And Asian piano makers have surpassed that number in annual production. Only the Kimball company may have produced more than that in one year. In the 1960's Aeolian made as many as 50,000 instruments some years. But there were many different brand names placed on the front of the pianos. Aeolian continued to build player pianos until 1982.Įarly players had the Aeolain Company name cast on the plate inside.
The player piano business was tremendous before the Great Depression. They also manufactured a huge number of player pianos and supplied player actions to many other companies. In the late 1800's William Tremaine was a very successful home organ maker, selling chamber organs to the wealthy. But it was used in later years on foreign made grands and uprights. The Aeolian brand itself was never used on their instruments in the earlier years. The ability to hold a large amount capital is one reason Aeolian, Baldwin, Steinway, Kimball, Wurlitzer and a few other US piano plants survived the Great Depression of the 1930's. This was a huge amount for a piano factory to control in the early 1900's. They employed well over 5000 people and had capital of over $15,000,000. There were factories in New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Melbourne and Sydney. This brought even more piano names under the control of Aeolian. Over the next 35 or 40 years he acquired a huge number of piano names or brands. His son Harry took over in 1898 and changed the name to The Aeolian Company. William Tremaine established the company in 1887 as the Aeolian Organ & Music Co. Now the Gibson Guitar company owns the name. It changed hands 5 or 6 times in it's long interesting history.
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