page_title: Frederick Mathushek
section_title: Mathushek & Son
hierarchical_section_title: Frederick Mathushek / Mathushek & Son
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of piano manufacturer Victor Hugo Mathushek
context_page_description: Frederick Mathushek, was a piano maker working in Worms, in Rhineland, Germany and in the United States at New York City and New Haven, Connecticut during the second half of the nineteenth century. His name continued to be used by several different piano manufacturers through the 1950s, and was filed independently as a trademark for musical instruments in 2005 and 2008.
context_section_description: In 1879 Frederick and Hugo Mathushek, jr. patented a new arrangement of bridge agraffes combined with a development of the front terminations introduced in the 1860 patent. The bridge arrangement, styled the equilibre system, involved deflecting the strings alternately toward and away from the soundboard to two different levels of hitchpins - a difference claimed to be as much as 15 degrees in one advertisement - in order to minimize the downward strain applied to the sounding board (which is usually less than 2 degrees with conventional pinned bridges).
  The following year, the Mathushek Piano Mfg. Co. cautioned the public against "bogus instruments represented as genuine Mathushek Pianos, at auction sales and elsewhere."
  In 1881 "the only genuine Mathushek with the equilibre system" was advertised having been "invented and manufactured by the original Mathusheks in New York", and the public was informed that "Mathushek, New York" should be cast in the iron frame and warned against pianos manufactured in West Haven, Connecticut under the same name.
  From 1882 to 1886 the name was claimed by Mathushek & Kinkeldey, at 210 East 129th street, New York, which had been founded by Frederick Mathushek's grandson Victor Hugo Mathushek (who had changed his surname from Doehler legally in early 1876) and who was joined by Charles Kinkeldey, the former superintendent for (John B.) Dunham & Sons, which had failed unexpectedly toward the end of 1880. V. H. Mathushek became sole owner of the company in 1886 and the firm became Mathushek & Son, located at 108 East 125th street and 242-244 East 122nd street and showed $35,000 in assets in 1887, but in April, 1888 the company was turned over to assignors.
  Mathushek & Son was incorporated under the laws of New York in 1890, directed by Frederick and Victor Hugo Mathushek, and Charles and C. Albert Jacob, of piano manufacturers Jacob Brothers, founded by them in 1877 in New York.
  Frederick Mathushek died November 9, 1891 at 242 West 123rd street, where he had lived with his grandson for five years. He had been superintendent at Mathushek & Son, at 344 and 346 East 23rd street.
  Victor Hugo Mathushek continued to develop designs like his grandfather's, and received patents for soundboard construction in 1891 (the duplex sounding board) and 1895, and metallic frames in 1896.
  Mathushek & Son's factory and warerooms were at 1569 Broadway, at the corner of 47th street, New York in 1900, where they sold a series of small upright pianos of their own manufacture, as well as Apollo, and later Regal players, and pianos by more famous manufacturers, and in 1903 they opened warerooms in Red Bank, New Jersey.
  The firm listed $50,000 capital in 1901, and by 1908, James P. Beckwith joined the directors as secretary.
caption: Victor Hugo Mathushek
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