Comments on: Saving History: The Rec Room and the Player Piano

By: Notes From February Meeting | Grandview Heritage Group

Notes From February Meeting | Grandview Heritage Group — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 20:47:40 +0000

[…] Kluckner gave a delightful presentation on the history of the rec room and, in particular of the player piano. More specifically, it was about the player piano he and his partner inherited on buying their […]

By: Jennifer Clay

Jennifer Clay — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 06:04:41 +0000

We have a Gerhard Heintzman piano (made in Toronto) that was converted from a player piano to a regular piano. The rollers and the glass window was removed. That said, it’s still heavy as hell because it is very deep in order to accommodate the player pieces! We had to put it in the living room which has French doors becauseit did not fit through any of the other doors on the main floor. It was neat to read that one could accompany a player piano in a duet. Thanks for the read!

By: Sid Smith

Sid Smith — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 00:56:55 +0000

Ours is a 1906 Bell upright. Built in Guelph Ontario and, according to the stamp inside the piano,
“expressly selected and voiced for the Montelius Piano House in Vancouver B.C.” . In our roll collection we have a couple that came from the store in Dunbar which was operated by Doyle H. Lane, and another from the Ross Piano House on Hastings Street. After 112 years, there are a few minor repairs needed but the old piano still plays well, a testament to the original craftsmanship.

By: Bill L

Bill L — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 05:54:42 +0000

There was a player piano store on Dunbar and 18th Avenue in the 1970s.

Lots of paper rolls still made and sold on the intertubes.

Some stores in town have the modern Yamaha Disklavier electronic piano. (One plays in the centre of Oakridge Mall).

By: Michael Kluckner

Michael Kluckner — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 23:44:12 +0000

My father was a jazz combo pianist in London before WWII and got a day job with BC Electric when he was demobilized and moved to Vancouver with his bride in 1946. He continued to play throughout his life and I have vivid memories of us as a family singing Christmas carols around the “Baby Grand” in our Kerrisdale living room, and of their friends with their rye & 7s and cigarettes having sing-alongs when their parties became more raucous as evenings progressed, and my brother and I helping with drink orders and emptying ashtrays until Mom noticed we were still up and sent us to bed.

That was such a period for people entertaining at home, as I mentioned in the post above, of “people making their own fun.” It also speaks to a period when people had detached houses that supported a kind of family life that has largely disappeared. Sic transit gloria mundi.

“First we design our buildings, then they design us,” as Winston Churchill may have said.

By: Doug Parks

Doug Parks — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 16:55:18 +0000

A friend of mine had a log cabin on a piece of property on the Sask. River inside of the Edmonton city limits. The two features inside the cabin were an enormous stone fireplace and a player piano. When my buddy came to Vancouver we would scour the junk stores up and down Main St. looking for rolls for his player piano. Those junk stores on Main St were almost like going to a museum.I wonder if they are surviving in these days of property taxes gone wild? Any ways the city of Edmonton expropriated the property and the log cabin was demolished. Ill be emailing my friend soon to find out what he did with the piano.