Steinway Piano Factory

Deep in Astoria, Queens, sits the Steinway Piano Factory, one of the last remaining structures from the old Steinway Village.

Built in 1872 by the Steinway family to serve their rising piano empire, this 400-acre company town accommodated employees with their own amusement park, firehouses, schools, churches, horse-car railroads, and initiated the infrastructure of the 7 Train (then known as the Steinway Tube) and the Queensborough Bridge.

While the factory no longer offers in-person factory tours they do have a virtual tour of their inner workings on their website. The factory itself still has 19th-century machines used to bend frames, people handmaking keys, and entire floors dedicated to wood incubators where materials are left for months at a time. The factory is responsible for the creation of over 2,000 grand pianos annually and is the only remaining piano factory in New York.