Despite a precipitous decline in ownership from one piano in every 316 homes in 1978 to less than 1 in 3,000 today, many of the instruments that do survive remain in use, having outlasted their original owners, their makers, the factories they were produced in, and the showrooms where they were sold, still retaining their power as symbols of technology and class mobility. ![]() Successive waves of increased efficiency and low-cost immigrant labor gradually reduced the price from a luxury status symbol that could cost as much as a small house to a mass-market commodity that symbolized ascent into the middle class in the post-war era. Originally produced on commission for wealthy families in the early 1800s, the piano as an object of material heritage came of age in the first era of mass industrialization. ![]() Few objects are as permanent in the fabric of American culture as the piano.
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