A. H. Gale

Biography

A. H. Gale was a practical piano-maker and one of the active workmen at the New York Pianoforte Manufacturing Company, a cooperative concern founded by roughly twenty former employees of Nunns & Clark. When the loosely organized company fell into disorder, Gale emerged as its "firmest and most dominant mind" and took over management under new conditions, renaming the business A. H. Gale & Company. Under his direction the firm built up a large wholesale trade, and the Gale & Company piano remained a familiar feature of the market for more than thirty years. The Haines brothers, Francis and Frank, served out their piano-making apprenticeships under Gale after the reorganization. Like other firms that clung to overly conservative methods, A. H. Gale & Company disappeared from the trade prior to 1870.

Highlights

• A practical piano-maker and active workman at the New York Pianoforte Manufacturing Company who emerged as its dominant figure after the cooperative firm's original structure broke down
• Renamed the firm A. H. Gale & Company and built it into a large wholesale piano business
• The Gale & Company piano was a familiar trade feature for upward of thirty years before the firm disappeared prior to 1870

Source

Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte (1890), pp. 185, 186.

Public domain.