Winter and Company

Winter and Company was an American manufacturer of pianos. Founded in 1901 as Heller & Co. by cabinetmaker Gottlieb Heller (b. 1868 in Stuttgart), the firm was purchased and renamed in June 1901 by Julius Winter (b. 1856 in Hungary).[1] In 1903, the company opened a factory on Southern Boulevard in The Bronx borough of New York City.[1] In 1904, the company began to sell player pianos that used a "Master Player" mechanism of its own design.[1]

Founded in the last decades of the Golden Age of the Piano, when the instrument had no competition from radio, recorded music, and the automobile, Winter & Co. outlived the vast majority of its contemporary pianomakers, and acquired several of them that fell on hard times. Among these were Chicago-based The Cable Company in 1943, once the country's largest maker of reed organs; the Ivers and Pond Piano Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1945; Kranich and Bach in 1946;[2] and Hardman Peck in 1953.[3] Mason & Risch of Ontario, Canada, was another.[4]

Its longtime president was William G. Heller, a son of Gottlieb.[5]

In 1951, the company opened a factory in Memphis, Tennessee.[5]

In the 1960s, Winter & Co. was merged with Aeolian-American pianomaking firm, becoming the Aeolian Company.