Strauch Brothers

[Bill Kibby]

Nothing to do with Columbia or Colombia, the so-called “Columbian Exposition” took place in Chicago, 1893 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus. Newman Brothers showed organs. Bush & Gertz, Cable, Kimball, Lehr, Melville Clark, Orpheus, Reed & Sons, Starck, Strauch and Vose all showed pianos, and almost all of them received medals, which seems to devalue the whole process! People reading information on instruments naturally assume that the individual piano was actually there at the exhibition, or even won a prize medal, whereas this is usually general information written on hundreds or thousands of pianos made in the years after the exhibition, some certainly as late as 1914.