Incredible Stephen Sondheim Collection Being Auctioned at UES Gallery

The estate of Stephen Sondheim is auctioning off over 400 of the late lyricist and composer’s items on Tuesday, June 18. On the four days prior to the auction, the collection, featuring some incredible memorabilia from old board games to Broadway posters to furniture pieces, was on display at Doyle Auctioneers & Appraisers, at 175 East 87th Street on the Upper East Side.

The collection comes from Sondheim’s Manhattan townhouse and country home in Roxbury, Connecticut. Fans of the musical theater genius will recognize some items, such as his gold record for the West Side Story soundtrack which sold for $44,800, or his custom-embroidered asylum coat from Sweeney Todd for $7,680.

Doyle Auctions provided a capsule biography of the composer for curiosity seekers who might just drop in off the street: “Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born in New York in 1930, the only child of dress manufacturer Herbert Sondheim and his wife, Etta Janet Fox. He spent his early years on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and, following his parents’ divorce when he was ten, on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from George School, a private Quaker prep school in Bucks County, and went on to study music at Williams College, where he graduated magna cum laude and was awarded the Hutchinson Prize for Composition.”

But those were his early years.

Most know Sondheim for his illustrious oeuvre, featuring some of the most iconic musicals of the 20th century like Company, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sondheim, a native New Yorker, is credited with reinventing Broadway and American musical theater generally.

What most don’t know about him is that he was an avid collector, accumulating Victorian and Edwardian-era furniture and amassing a collection of antique puzzles, games, and machines.

Examples include a French 18th-century game of the goose designed to teach morality that sold for $3,520, a 1926 automobile card game for $2,304, several dice-rolling and chess-style games of chance for up to $2,200, and various children’s instructional games.

One of the pricier items, a fabergé enameled silver-gilt and wood-covered box, sold for a whopping $70,350.

More sentimental items are also up for auction, such as Sondheim’s first royalty check for a published song from 1948, while he was an 18-year-old sophomore at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Issued by the music publisher Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) and dated December 12, 1948, the check for 74 cents—yes, 74 cents. As there are no cancellation marks on the check, it’s believed it was never cashed.

The exact songs Sondheim was being paid for are unknown but come from one of his first musicals, Phinney’s Rainbow, a campus life parody whose title is a play on the popular musical Finian’s Rainbow, and the middle name of then Williams president, James Phinney Baxter III.

Sondheim wrote a whopping twenty-five songs for Phinney’s Rainbow, performed four times by the student theatrical group Cap & Bells in the spring of 1948. BMI published three of the songs, and their performance earned the tyro composer... 74 cents.

76 years later, at the auction, Sondheim’s check sold for $20,480.

On June 17 the day before the auction, dozens of people filled the Doyle Gallery admiring the odd and eclectic collection Sondheim took such pride in throughout his life. Looking at it all, it’s hard not to laugh, and gasp in awe at this material manifestation of his unconventional curiosity and brilliance.

Do you like carnival games? Sondheim did! Among the items up for bidding, all sold for $1,000 - $2,000.

A group of three carnival bean bag targets depicting German WWII Wehrmacht figures - an officer, a soldier, and a woman auxiliary. England: circa 1939-1945. Approximately 26 inches tall; Carved and painted wood figures in two parts, the body and the head, the two parts attached with a metal hinged mechanism on the reverse.

Eight carnival target figures in the form of Chinese Pirates. Twentieth century. Each is approximately 14 inches tall; Cut metal, painted on the front and back, atop a metal hinge.

A carnival ball toss game featuring a large painted wood face with open mouth, on stands. With four sewn leather balls.

After June 18, most items will have a new home, and the legacy of the musical legend will live on, albeit most likely dispersed around the world.