The Cable Company

The Cable Company
FormerlyThe Chicago Cottage Organ Company
Company typecorporation
Industrymusical instrument manufacture
Founded1880
FounderHerman D. Cable
Defunct1936
FateMerger
SuccessorThe Schiller Cable Manufacturing Company
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
,
United States
ProductsPianos, reed organs
BrandsConover, Cable, Kingsbury, and Wellington pianos; Carola, Solo Carola, Euphona, Solo Euphona, and Euphona Reproducing Inner-Player player pianos; Chicago Cottage reed organs
Number of employees
Ca. 500 (Ca. 1905)
Row of key fitters at the Cable Company St. Charles Il. factory Making Wellington Pianos.
Employees at one of The Cable Company's two factories fit keys to Wellington brand pianos around 1918.
Kingsbury Piano.
Kingsbury was one of the many brands produced by the Cable Company.

The Cable Company (earlier, Wolfinger Organ Company, Chicago Cottage Organ Company; sometimes called by the name of its subsidiary, The Cable Piano Company) was an American manufacturer and distributor of pianos and reed organs that operated independently from 1880 to 1936.

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the company proclaimed itself "the world's greatest manufacturer of pianos, inner player pianos, and organs".[1][2][3] It was indubitably one of the largest, and maintained that status for several decades during the apogee of U.S. piano sales, the so-called Golden Age of the Piano.[4] Trade publications of the day called it "the largest reed organ house in the world, and the largest wholesaler in the world of medium-grade pianos" (1895);[5] "the largest piano and organ makers in the world" (1904);[6] and "one of the 'great leaders' in the trade" (1922).[7] Its premium Conover line of pianos was noted as belonging to "the highest grade manufactured".[7]

The decline of the piano market in the late 1920s followed by the Great Depression forced The Cable Company to merge with another northern-Illinois piano maker in 1936, becoming The Schiller Cable Manufacturing Company. In 1950, the merged company was subsumed into the Aeolian Company, which closed in 1984.

  1. ^ "St. Charles Historic Buildings: Cable Piano Company". St. Charles Public Library. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  2. ^ Santa Fe Trail Magazine. Santa Fe Publishing Company. 1897.
  3. ^ Bricault, Debra (2002). Cadillac: Vintage Postcard Memoirs. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-2003-2.
  4. ^ "Cable Piano Company". Antique Piano Shop. 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :14 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO". Presto-Times. No. 2241. Chicago: Presto Publishing. December 15, 1929. p. 9. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).