The Story and Clark Piano Factory

That handsome brick building on the harbor with the condominiums inside once rang with the sound of pianos being born. The Story and Clark company began as a partnership in Chicago in eighteen eighty-four, first making reed organs, then pianos. One of those partners, Melville Clark, left in nineteen hundred to build player pianos under his own name.

Around the turn of the century the firm packed up and moved to Grand Haven, and production began here in nineteen oh one. The factory replaced the old Columbus Avenue home of Senator Thomas White Ferry, one of the first permanent houses in Grand Haven, where he had lived until his death in eighteen ninety-six. In the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties, the plant added baby grand pianos and player pianos to its line.

For decades it was one of the largest employers in town, and it was tough enough to keep building pianos through hard decades. The company changed hands in its last decades, and the Grand Haven factory finally fell silent in nineteen eighty-four. But the building did not come down.

It has since been reborn as condominiums, keeping some of the old factory's character. So the next time you hear a Story and Clark piano in an old parlor somewhere, there is a fair chance it was built right here, on the banks of the Grand.