It’s not traditional flotsam and jetsam that’s washed up on a Florida sandbar: a grand piano, weighing in at 650 pounds, has mysteriously appeared and now sits perched on a sandbar in north Florida’s Biscayne Bay. How the piano arrived to the sandbar, or why, remains a mystery.
The grand piano brand is Wheelock -- the manufacturer of beautiful pianos and a brand extremely popular near the turn of the 20th century. In its “grander” days, the piano appears to have originated from a store by the name of Bradford’s Pianos and Organs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s where any part of the known story ends. The once-beautiful instrument isn’t in its most prime condition, though it does remain upright and mostly intact.
The Wheelock piano company itself began in 1880 -- becoming part of Aeolian Weber in 1903 and then Aeolian American in 1932. The Aeolian name, which was once Wheelock, is currently owned by Gibson -- the famous guitar company and also the owner of Baldwin Pianos.
At least one witness claims that he noticed a boatload of people near the Florida sandbar recently, and believed at the time that the group was filming a music video. The mysterious rise of a 650-lb grand piano could be as simple as large instance of “littering”. The theory is that whoever unloaded the massive instrument was unwilling to reload the heavy piano back onto the boat by day's end.
The “grand” now serves as fancy, new digs for Florida seagulls – who are happy with the find, and in appreciation of the grand piano’s placement on the sandbar's highest point. The city says it isn’t paying to haul the grand piano away so -- unless it becomes a hazard --so, for now, the Wheelock stays where it sits. That is, until Florida officials figure out the 'who dunnit'.