Cataloguing the Collection

During the spring and summer of 2006, we hired Judy Chrisman, Immediate Past President and current Collections Chair of the Washtenaw County Historical Society, to work with our own Curatorial Consultant, Carol Mull to catalogue our entire collection using the new Past Perfect software purchased from the American Association for State and Local History. Collections Director, Ed Rice has also been working with them. The cataloguing process is now nearly completed.

Children's Exhibit

Our interpretive advisor Nancy Bryk recommended some time ago that we set up a display especially for children and allow some activities for them as well. In the process of cataloguing the collection, some duplicate items and some reproductions were found to be suitable for handling and thus can be used to educate children. A basket of these items has been set aside in the uptairs sitting area near our display of childrens books and toys. We will add to this as we collect more objects.

The Kempfs’ Piano

This magnificent instrument was built by Steinway and Sons in 1877 for a University of Michigan student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When the student graduated and returned to his home, he sold the piano to Reuben Kempf, who had recently begun teaching music in downtown Ann Arbor.

As the first "Grand" in Ann Arbor, the piano was loaned to the U of M for concerts by Ignace Paderewski and Victor Herbert, an old friend who studied with Reuben Kempf in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1900, famous opera diva Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink came to perform at the University. She inspected the Kempf’s piano and declared it ‘excellent.’ She admired the long mirror in the studio and asked to borrow it for her dressing room. The Kempfs obliged and were visited by Schumann-Heink when she came to sing in the May Festival and other events from 1900-1927.

The piano remained in the house through subsequent owners and has been an important part of the museum, which opened in 1970. In 1997 the piano was substantially repaired. It is kept tuned and used for our Christmas caroling parties, Valentine teas, recitals, and for concerts such as Bolcom and Morris' Hail to the Victorians. Funds raised from this benefit will be used to preserve and maintain the instrument for the enjoyment of future generations.

Steinway and Sons

Heinrich Steinweg was a German craftsman who immigrated to the United States in 1850. He changed his name to Henry Steinway and established the firm of Steinway and sons on Varick Street in lower Manhattan in 1853 - the same year the Kempf House was built in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1877 Steinway and Sons moved its operations to Queens on the East River, just south of the present LaGuardia Airport, in an area now known as Steinway Village. That year they built the grand piano that would later belong to the Kempfs. One of Steinway's chief cabinet makers then was David Oertel, a German immigrant and the great-grandfather of Edith ("Teddy") Maynard, a long-time Old West Side resident and Kempf House member. Could Mr. Oertel have worked directly on the piano that was to end up in the Kempf House Museum? This remains an intriguing mystery!

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