Massachusetts Townsfolk Fight for a Grand Old Piano

For more than 100 years, children performed their first recitals on the Steinway concert grand piano in this small town’s library.

So townsfolk were stunned to see a “For Sale” notice in a newspaper for the piano, which the library decided it had to get rid of to make room for three computers.

Not about to allow the Steinway to fall into the wrong hands, a group of residents worked together to find the piano a new home and the money to move it.

“It has sentimental as well as historical value,” said University of Massachusetts math professor Doris Stockton, recalling how her own musician son had his first public performance on the piano. “Nearly every family in town has old snapshots of one child or another on the library stage with the piano.”

Stockton and her son, Tom, a jazz pianist and music director for Most Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford, Conn., formed a citizens group to save the piano. The library trustees agreed not to sell it after all, and two weeks later, the 120-year-old instrument had a new home.

“It was really amazing,” Stockton said. “We didn’t go out soliciting with our petitions or anything. It was all spontaneous. People just started calling.”

The piano, which has been in the library since it opened in 1887, is moving halfway up the town’s 4-acre common to another building important to the history of this town of 12,300 about 80 miles west of Boston.

“We’re delighted to baby-sit that piano,” said Art Gauthier, chairman of the board of trustees at the First Congregational Church. “The Congregational Church was the town’s original meeting house, and the piano has quite a history in the community, so we felt almost obliged.”

The little white clapboard church, which dates back to the early 1700s, will keep the piano for at least 20 years, but ownership will remain with the library. The piano has been valued at up to $50,000.

The Stocktons’ group is raising the few hundred dollars needed to move the grand piano into the church and move the church’s baby grand into the adjacent parish hall.

Library officials said they were caught between trying to maintain the library’s old-time ambience and providing services to a growing community.

Book circulation has jumped from 24,000 volumes to more than 120,000 in the last seven years, “and we haven’t a square inch of spare space,” said Tom Fuller, chairman of the library trustees.

Even though the piano is leaving, Fuller said plans are being made for its return to the stage.

“The stacks, the lights, everything was put in so it could be easily taken out,” Fuller said. “And someday . . . somehow, we will return it to a stage fitting for the piano.”