Steinway Mansion
18-33 41st Street | Steinway | built 1858
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1858
Instrument maker Benjamin Pike Jr. builds a 27-room summer villa on a waterfront estate
Benjamin Pike Jr., a Manhattan maker and dealer of optical and scientific instruments, built the house in 1857-58 as a 27-room summer retreat costing $85,000, on a 70-acre estate with 4,000 feet of shoreline. He worked his trade into the interiors: cut glass in the pocket doors shows several of his instruments. Pike died in 1864 and the estate went to his widow.
“The mansion was constructed as a 27-room summer residence between 1857 and 1858 at a cost of $85,000…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1870
Piano maker William Steinway buys the Pike villa and builds a company town around it
Pike's widow sold the mansion in 1870 to William Steinway of Steinway & Sons. Seeking distance from Manhattan's labor unrest, Steinway enlarged his Queens holdings to 440 acres and built a piano factory and Steinway Village, a company town with worker housing, a church, a library and a kindergarten. The Steinway family kept the house until 1926.
“Following Pike's death, his widow sold the mansion to William Steinway of Steinway & Sons in 1870.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1926
Tailor Jack Halberian buys the mansion he first spotted from a trolley in 1914
Jack Halberian, an Armenian-Turkish immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1913, saw the house in 1914 from a trolley bound for North Beach and vowed to own it. Savings from his tailoring business let him buy it in 1926. Its water and electricity had come from the Steinway factory, so he laid new water lines and got Con Edison to run power lines, costs that forced a 1928 demand mortgage that nearly lost him the house.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1967
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the granite Italianate villa a landmark
Designating the house on February 15, 1967, the commission described a rambling, asymmetrical Italianate country villa of rough-hewn granite with 27 rooms. A two-story T-shaped core around a central hall meets a four-story tower on the west, with a one-story library wing, porches and terraces filling out the plan; four cast-iron Corinthian columns carry the main entrance porch.
- 1971
The mansion plays the grandmother's house in the film The Pursuit of Happiness
The 1971 film The Pursuit of Happiness used the Steinway Mansion as the grandmother's house, and three of its scenes show the interior and exterior at length. Nearly five decades later the house appeared on screen again, when an interior scene for the sixth episode of the television series Evil was filmed there in 2019.
“The Steinway Mansion was used as the filming location for the grandmother's house. Three scenes feature extensive shots of both the interior and exterior…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1976
Michael Halberian inherits the mansion he grew up in and turns down Mayor Koch
When Jack Halberian died in 1976, his son Michael, who had been raised in the house, moved back and began his own restoration, adding a motorized 1,000-pound chandelier once owned by the Whitney family, plus a sauna, a steam room and a jacuzzi. He also paid $20,000 for six mahogany booths from an English pub. Mayor Ed Koch, visiting, offered to buy the booths for Gracie Mansion; Halberian refused.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2010
Michael Halberian dies in the front hall after a snowstorm delays paramedics
Michael Halberian fell ill in late December 2010 and died on December 27 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A severe snowstorm had left the roads unplowed, and the paramedics, who finally arrived on foot, found that he had collapsed near the gate. They carried him back inside, and he died in the front hall after they were unable to revive him.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
New owners pay $2.65 million for the deteriorating mansion and restore it
After Halberian's death the house sat unsold for years; a coalition called the Friends of Steinway Mansion, joined by Steinway & Sons, failed to raise the $5 million needed to buy it. Sal Lucchese and Philip Loria finally bought it in 2014 for $2.65 million. Warehouses went up on parts of the grounds, leaving the mansion on just over a quarter acre, and the owners began a restoration that included rebuilding the grand balcony.
“After years on the market, as well as numerous price reductions, Sal Lucchese and Philip Loria paid $2.65 million for the property in 2014.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Steinway MansionWikipedia
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