The Masonic Lodge Pipe Organ: Another neglected chapter in the history of pipe organ building in America

James Lewis is an organist, organ historian and commercial photographer. He has researched the organs of California for over 35 years and has published articles on the subject in several periodicals. This article is a small section of a much larger text of a forthcoming book from the Organ Historical Society.

Introduction
Los Angeles is home today to many wonderful organs. During the early twentieth century, pipe organs were constructed for spaces beyond the typical church, theater, or university setting. This article traces the histories of over a dozen pipe organs in private homes, social clubs, school and church auditoriums, and even a home furnishings store. It provides a glimpse of organbuilding—and life—in a more glamorous, pre-Depression age.

Temple Baptist Church
Come back in time to the spring of 1906, where we find the Temple Baptist Church of Los Angeles readying their new building for opening. Although the new complex was financed by a religious organization, it was not designed as a traditional church building. Architect Charles Whittlesey produced plans that included a 2700-seat theater auditorium with a full working stage, two smaller halls, and a nine-story office block, providing the burgeoning city with a venue for various entertainments and civic events, and Temple Church with facilities for church activities. Even though the official name of the building was Temple Auditorium, it was also known over the years as Clune’s Theatre and Philharmonic Auditorium. In addition to church services, the Auditorium was used for concerts, public meetings, ballet, silent motion pictures, and beginning in 1921, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Light Opera Association.
It was the first steel-reinforced poured concrete structure in Los Angeles. The auditorium had five narrow balconies and was decorated in a simplified Art Nouveau-style influenced by Louis Sullivan’s Auditorium in Chicago. Color and gold leaf were liberally used, and the concentric rings of the ceiling over the orchestra section were covered with Sullivanesque ornamentation and studded with electric lights. Concealed behind this area, on either side of the stage, was the organ.
The Auditorium Company ordered a large four-manual organ (Opus 156) from the Austin Organ Company of Hartford, Connecticut. Similar to the auditorium itself, the instrument was used more for secular occasions than for church services. It was the first large, modern organ in Los Angeles and contained such innovations as second touch, high wind pressures, an array of orchestral voices, and an all-electric, movable console with adjustable combination action.
The instrument had a partially enclosed Great division, with a large selection of 8′ stops that included four 8′ Open Diapasons. Second touch was available on the Swell keyboard through a Great to Swell coupler. The Choir division was labeled Orchestral and contained a variety of soft string and flute stops along with three orchestral reeds. The Solo division was on 25″ wind pressure and unenclosed except for the Harmonic Tuba, unified to play at 16′, 8′ and 4′ pitches. 25″ wind pressure was also used in the Pedal division for the Magnaton stop, playable at 32′ and 16′. An article about the Auditorium in the Architectural Record magazine stated “the roof is reinforced with steel so that the tones of the large organ will not cause any structural damage.”1 A mighty organ, indeed!
The four-manual console was located in the orchestra pit and movable within a range of 50 feet. Its design was influenced by the early consoles of Robert Hope-Jones and featured two rows of stop keys placed above the top keyboard, a style affectionately known as a “toothbrush console,” because to an active imagination the two rows of stop keys looked like the rows of bristles on a toothbrush.
In 1912, Dr. Ray Hastings (1880–1940) was appointed house organist, and he played for church services, silent motion pictures, radio broadcasts, public recitals, and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.2
Temple Auditorium and its mighty Austin organ served Los Angeles for many years, but by the 1950s the place was beginning to look a bit tired. Sometime after World War II, the interior was painted a ghastly shade of green, covering up all the color and gold of the original decorative scheme. In 1965 the Philharmonic Orchestra and Light Opera both moved to the new Los Angeles Music Center and the Auditorium never again operated as a theater.
The organ began to develop serious wind leaks, and the 25″-wind-pressure Solo division and Pedal Magnaton were finally disconnected. A supply-house console replaced the original Austin console in the 1960s and was moved out of the orchestra pit to the stage.
Sunday morning services of Temple Baptist Church became sparsely attended as people moved out of Los Angeles to the new suburbs. There did not seem to be any use for the old Auditorium, and the complex finally succumbed to the wrecker’s ball in 1985. The pipework from the Austin organ was sold off piecemeal and the chests were left in the chambers to come down with the demolition of the building. What began as Los Angeles’s first, modern organ of the 20th-century came to an ignominious end.

Temple Auditorium, Los Angeles
Austin Organ Company, 1906, Opus 156

GREAT
(unenclosed)
16′ Major Diapason
16′ Contra Dulciana
8′ First Diapason
8′ Second Diapason
8′ Third Diapason
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Claribel Flute
4′ Octave
4′ Hohl Flute
3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
(enclosed)
8′ Horn Diapason
8′ Violoncello
8′ Viol d’Amour
8′ Doppel Flute
4′ Fugara
III Mixture
16′ Double Trumpet
8′ Trumpet
4′ Clarion

SWELL
16′ Gross Gamba
8′ Diapason Phonon
8′ Violin Diapason
8′ Gemshorn
8′ Echo Viole
8′ Vox Angelica
8′ Gemshorn
8′ Rohr Flute
8′ Flauto Dolce
8′ Unda Maris
8′ Quintadena
4′ Principal
4′ Harmonic Flute
2′ Flageolet
III Dolce Cornet
16′ Contra Posaune
8′ Cornopean
8′ Oboe
8′ Vox Humana
Tremolo
Vox Humana Tremolo

ORCHESTRAL
16′ Contra Viole
8′ Geigen Principal
8′ Viole d’Orchestre
8′ Viole Celeste
8′ Vox Seraphique
8′ Concert Flute
8′ Lieblich Gedackt
4′ Violina
4′ Flauto Traverso
2′ Piccolo Harmonique
16′ Double Oboe Horn
8′ Clarinet
8′ Cor Anglais
Tremolo

SOLO
8′ Grand Diapason
8′ Flauto Major
8′ Gross Gamba
4′ Gambette
4′ Flute Ouverte
2′ Super Octave
8′ Orchestral Oboe
8′ Saxophone (synthetic)
16′ Tuba Profunda
8′ Harmonic Tuba (ext)
4′ Clarion (ext)

PEDAL
32′ Contra Magnaton
32′ Resultant
16′ Magnaton
16′ Major Diapason
16′ Small Diapason (Gt)
16′ Violone
16′ Bourdon
16′ Dulciana (Gt)
16′ Contra Viole (Orch)
8′ Gross Flute
8′ ‘Cello
8′ Flauto Dolce
4′ Super Octave
16′ Tuba Profunda (Solo)
8′ Tuba (Solo)

Swell Sub
Swell Octave
Orchestral Sub
Orchestral Octave
Solo Sub
Solo Super
Swell to Pedal
Swell to Pedal Octave
Great to Pedal
Orchestral to Pedal
Solo to Pedal
Swell to Great Sub
Swell to Great Unison
Swell to Great Octave
Orchestral to Great Sub
Orchestral to Great Unison
Solo to Great Unison
Solo to Great Octave
Great to Swell Unison Second Touch
Swell to Orchestral Sub
Swell to Orchestral Unison
Swell to Orchestral Octave
Solo to Orchestral Unison

Tally’s Broadway Theatre
Eight years after the Temple Auditorium organ was installed, Tally’s Broadway Theatre took delivery on a four-manual organ advertised as “The World’s Finest Theatre Pipe Organ.” The 47-rank organ had been ordered early in 1913 from the Los Angeles builder Murray M. Harris, but by the time it was installed in 1914 the name of the firm had been changed to the Johnston Organ Company and the factory moved to the nearby suburb of Van Nuys.
Tally’s instrument must have been the original “surround sound,” as most of the pipework was installed in shallow chambers extending down both sides of the rectangular-shaped auditorium. The Choir division was on the stage and had its own façade, while the Echo was behind a grille at one side of the stage. Positioned on a lift in the orchestra pit, the four-manual drawknob console was equipped with a roll player.
This was not the sort of theatre organ that would come into prominence during the 1920s, a highly unified instrument full of color stops all blended together by numerous tremolos. Tally’s organ was not that much different from a Murray M. Harris church organ, except for the saucer bells and a lack of upperwork.
Installation was still underway when it came time for the opening concert, but since the show must go on, the event took place. A reviewer wrote “while the unfinished and badly out of tune instrument, under the skillful manipulation of an excellent performer, did give pleasure to a large portion of the big audience, nevertheless it was an unfinished and badly out of tune instrument and as such it could not favorably impress the ear of the critic.”3
Charles Demorest, a former student of Harrison Wild in Chicago, who played at Tally’s, was also the organist at the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, and gave Monday afternoon recitals on the organ in Hamburger’s department store. In the May, 1914 edition of The Pacific Coast Musician it was mentioned that “Charles Demorest is doing much to uphold good music for the motion picture theatres by the quality of his organ work at Tally’s Broadway Theatre, Los Angeles, where he has a concert organ of immense resources at his command. This instrument is a four-manual organ equipped with chimes, saucer bells, concert harp and echo organ. Mr. Demorest plays a special program every Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock where an orchestra and soloists further contribute to the excellence at the Tally Theatre.”4
In the mid-1920s, the May Company department store next door to Tally’s was doing a booming business and needed larger quarters. Negotiations with Tally led to the theater being purchased and torn down to make way for a greatly expanded May Company building. The organ was crated up and moved to Mr. Tally’s Glen Ranch, where it was stored in a barn. It was eventually ruined by water damage when the roof leaked.

Tally’s Broadway Theatre
Johnston Organ Company, 1914

GREAT
16′ Double Open Diapason
8′ First Open Diapason
8′ Second Open Diapason
8′ Viola
8′ Viol d’Amour
8′ Tibia Clausa
8′ Clarabella
4′ Octave
4′ Wald Flute
8′ Trumpet
Cathedral Chimes
Concert Harp
Saucer Bells

SWELL
16′ Bourdon
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Violin Diapason
8′ Violin
8′ Voix Celeste
8′ Aeoline
8′ Stopped Flute
4′ Harmonic Flute
2′ Harmonic Piccolo
16′ Contra Fagotto
8′ Horn
8′ Oboe
8′ Vox Humana

CHOIR
16′ Double Dulciana
8′ Geigen Principal
8′ Dulciana
8′ Lieblich Gedackt
8′ Quintadena
4′ Dulcet
8′ Clarinet

SOLO
8′ Diapason Phonon
8′ Harmonic Flute
8′ Tibia Plena
8′ Harmonic Tuba
8′ Orchestral Oboe

ECHO
8′ Flauto Dolce
8′ Unda Maris
8′ Concert Flute
8′ Orchestral Viol
4′ Flute d’Amour
8′ Vox Mystica

PEDAL
32′ Acoustic Bass
16′ Open Diapason
16′ Bourdon
16′ Contra Basso (Gt)
16′ Dulciana (Ch)
16′ Lieblich Gedackt (Sw)
8′ Violoncello
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Flute
16′ Trombone

Swell Tremolo
Choir Tremolo
Solo Tremolo
Echo Tremolo

Trinity Auditorium
In 1914, inspired perhaps by the success of Temple Auditorium, Trinity Southern Methodist Church opened their new Trinity Auditorium, a large Beaux Arts structure on South Grand Avenue containing a multi-use 1500-seat auditorium and a nine-story hotel with rooftop ballroom.
An organ was ordered from the Murray M. Harris Company, but just like the Tally’s Theatre organ, it was installed under the name of the Johnston Organ Company. The organ was a four-manual instrument of 63 ranks situated above the stage floor, but within the proscenium arch, with an Echo division in the dome at the center of the room. The drawknob console was at one side of the orchestra pit.
The tonal design was typical of a large, late Murray Harris organ, boasting an assortment of 8′ stops and big chorus reeds on both the Great and Solo, but without the usual Great mixture. The Tibias, Diapason Phonon in the Swell and the slim-scale strings of the Solo division, stops not normally found on Harris organs, show the influence of Stanley Williams, the firm’s voicer since 1911, who had worked with Hope-Jones in England.
Arthur Blakeley was house organist and played for church services, silent motion pictures, weekly public recitals and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, who used the building from 1918 to 1921. It was noted that by May 1915, Blakeley had provided music for 108 performances of a film entitled “Cabiria” and played over one hundred different compositions in his weekly recitals, ranging from works by Bach, Handel and Wagner to Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm.5
There was one area in which Trinity Auditorium failed to emulate Temple Auditorium—financing. To construct the auditorium and hotel complex the church secured such a heavy mortgage that one newspaper account claimed it was financed clear into the 21st century. A few years after it opened, Trinity Auditorium was taken over by a management company that continued to operate it as a public venue, and the church moved to humbler quarters.
Trinity Auditorium was a popular place for meetings of the local AGO chapter, and among the artists heard there were Pietro Yon, Charles Courboin, and Clarence Eddy. The organ continued to be used for films, concerts and later on, radio broadcasts, but by the 1940s it had become a liability. To save the expense of upkeep on an instrument that by then was only occasionally used and to secure more space on the stage, the organ was removed and broken up for parts.

Trinity Auditorium
Johnston Organ Company, 1914

GREAT
16′ Double Open Diapason
8′ First Open Diapason
8′ Second Open Diapason
8′ Viola di Gamba
8′ Viol d’Amour
8′ Tibia Clausa
8′ Doppel Floete
4′ Octave
4′ Harmonic Flute
22⁄3′ Octave Quint
2′ Super Octave
16′ Double Trumpet
8′ Trumpet
4′ Clarion
Cathedral Chimes

SWELL
16′ Lieblich Bourdon
8′ Diapason Phonon
8′ Violin Diapason
8′ Salicional
8′ Aeoline
8′ Vox Celeste
8′ Lieblich Gedackt
8′ Clarabella
4′ Principal
4′ Lieblich Floete
4′ Violina
2′ Harmonic Piccolo
IV Dolce Cornet
16′ Contra Fagotto
8′ Cornopean
8′ Oboe
Tremolo

CHOIR
16′ Double Dulciana
8′ Geigen Principal
8′ Dulciana
8′ Quintadena
8′ Melodia
4′ Wald Floete
4′ Dulcet
8′ Clarinet
Tremolo
Concert Harp

SOLO
8′ Gross Gamba
8′ Tibia Plena
8′ Harmonic Flute
8′ Viole d’Orchestre
8′ Viole Celeste
16′ Ophicleide
8′ Tuba
4′ Tuba Clarion

ECHO
16′ Echo Bourdon
8′ Echo Diapason
8′ Viol Etheria
8′ Unda Maris
8′ Concert Flute
4′ Flauto Traverso
8′ Vox Humana
Tremolo
Concert Harp (Ch)

PEDAL
32′ Double Open Diapason
32′ Resultant
16′ Open Diapason
16′ Violone
16′ Tibia Profundo
16′ Bourdon
16′ Lieblich Gedackt (Sw)
16′ Dulciana (Ch)
16′ Echo Bourdon (Echo)
8′ Octave
8′ Violoncello
8′ Flute
16′ Trombone
16′ Ophicleide (Solo)
8′ Tuba (Solo)

University of Southern California
In 1920, the University of Southern California placed an order for a large concert organ to be built by the Robert-Morton Organ Company and installed in the new Bovard Auditorium on the USC campus. Under a headline reading “Organ Attracts,” the Los Angeles Times told that “a great increase of interest is being manifested by the faculty and student body of the organ department, USC, since the announcement was recently made that the new organ, one of the largest in the southwest, is soon to be installed in the auditorium of that institution. The instrument will be provided with eighty stops and 500 pipes.”6 Well, perhaps a few more than 500!
Bovard is a large auditorium graced with a dollop of Gothic tracery, originally seating 2,100 on the main floor and in two balconies. The Robert-Morton organ, the largest instrument built by the firm, was located in concrete chambers on either side of the stage and completely enclosed, except for the 16′ Pedal Bourdon. It was not an ideal installation, as the Swell and Choir divisions were placed so they spoke onto the stage area and the Great and Solo were located in the auditorium proper. For organ recitals, the stage curtains had to be open so the audience could hear the entire instrument.
By 1920, the builder no longer made drawknob consoles, so the Bovard organ was supplied with a four-manual horseshoe console. It was placed in the orchestra pit and had color-coded stop keys; diapasons were white, flutes blue, strings amber, reeds red, and the couplers were short-length black stop keys placed over the top keyboard.7
The organ had two enormous 32′ stops. When the instrument was completed at the Van Nuys factory, low C of the 32′ Bombarde was assembled outside the main building and supplied with air so that its sound could be demonstrated for the local residents.
In June of 1921, the organ was dedicated in two recitals given by the British virtuoso Edwin Lemare. It was a well-used instrument in its day, providing music for university events, concerts, commencement exercises, and it served as the major practice and recital organ for many USC organ students.
By the mid-1970s the organ had fallen out of favor and some of the pipework was vandalized by students, causing the instrument to become unplayable. It was finally removed from the auditorium in 1978, and the undamaged pipework was sold for use in other organs.

University of Southern California
Robert-Morton Organ Company, 1921

GREAT
16′ Double Open Diapason
8′ First Open Diapason
8′ Second Open Diapason
8′ Third Open Diapason
8′ Viola
8′ Erzahler
8′ Doppel Flute
8′ Melodia
4′ Octave
4′ Wald Floete
2′ Flageolet
V Mixture
16′ Double Trumpet
8′ Trumpet
4′ Clarion

SWELL
16′ Bourdon
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Horn Diapason
8′ Salicional
8′ Celeste
8′ Aeoline
8′ Viol d’Orchestre
8′ Viol Celeste
8′ Stopped Diapason
8′ Clarabella
8′ Gemshorn
4′ Violin
4′ Harmonic Flute
2′ Piccolo
III Cornet
16′ Contra Fagotto
8′ Cornopean
8′ Flugel Horn
8′ Oboe
8′ Vox Humana
4′ Clarion
Tremolo

CHOIR
16′ Contra Viole
8′ Geigen Principal
8′ Dulciana
8′ Quintadena
8′ Concert Flute
8′ Flute Celeste
4′ Flute
22⁄3′ Nazard
2′ Piccolo

SOLO
8′ Stentorphone
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Gamba
8′ Gamba Celeste
8′ French Horn
8′ English Horn
8′ Saxophone
8′ Clarinet
8′ Orchestral Oboe
8′ Tuba
Harp
Chimes

ECHO
8′ Cor de Nuit
8′ Muted Viole
8′ Viole Celeste
4′ Zauberfloete
8′ Vox Humana
Tremolo

PEDAL
32′ Double Open Diapason
32′ Resultant
16′ Open Diapason
16′ Bourdon
16′ Violone (Gt)
16′ Lieblich Bourdon (Sw)
16′ Contra Viole (Ch)
16′ Echo Bourdon
8′ Principal
8′ Flute
8′ Cello
8′ Dulciana
4′ Flute
Compensating Mixture
32′ Bombarde
16′ Trombone
16′ Fagotto (Sw)
8′ Trumpet

Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre
When Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre was constructed at Sixth and Hill Streets in 1923, Tally’s Broadway Theatre must have looked rather dowdy in comparison. The Metropolitan, a monumental piece of architecture, was and remained the largest theater in Los Angeles and had a four-manual, 36-rank Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra, Opus #543. This was the largest organ built by Wurlitzer at the time, beating out the celebrated Denver Auditorium organ by one rank. The 36 ranks of pipes were divided between two sections of the theater: 24 ranks in chambers located over the proscenium arch and 12 ranks in the Echo division at the rear of the balcony. Albert Hay Malotte, Gaylord Carter and Alexander Schreiner were Metropolitan organists at various times, accompanying films and presenting organ solos enhanced by lighting subtly changing color to match the mood of the music.
James Nuttall, who installed the organ, escorted a writer for the Los Angeles Times through the newly installed instrument and provided a description of its resources:
The tonal chambers, or swell boxes as they are technically termed, each measure 20 feet long and 11 feet wide, and are arranged above the proscenium arch. They are constructed in such a manner that they are practically sound proof, being built of nonporous inert material, with the interior finished in hard plaster. The front wall of each chamber facing the auditorium is left open and into this opening is fitted a mechanism built in the form of a large laminated Venetian blind. The opening and closing of the shutters in this Venetian blind produce unlimited dynamic tonal expression from the softest whisper to an almost overwhelming volume.
In the basement of the theatre is the blowing apparatus consisting of two Kinetic blowers connected directly to a twenty-five horsepower motor. Each of the blowers is capable of supplying 2500 cubic feet compressed air per minute. The compressed air is used to work the electro-pneumatic actions as well as to supply the various tone producers.
There are four manuals on the console, and the pedal board on which the bass notes are played with the feet. The stop keys number 236 and these are arranged above the keyboards on three tiers and are divided into departments of independent organs. The lowest manual is the accompaniment organ, the middle keyboard is the great organ and is so arranged so the echo organ may be played from this manual. The third manual is a bombarde organ and the top one is the solo organ.8

Although the advent of sound motion pictures silenced many of the organs in Los Angeles theaters, the Metropolitan organ was in use much longer due to the continuation of live stage shows well into the 1950s. In 1960 the theater was closed and by 1961 it had been demolished and the organ broken up for parts.

Poly-Technic High School
Poly-Technic High School was one of several high schools in the Los Angeles area to have a pipe organ. For their new auditorium, completed in 1924, the school ordered a four-manual organ from the Estey Organ Company. Decorated in the Spanish Renaissance style, the auditorium seated 1,800 and had a full working stage. The organ was installed in chambers located on either side of the proscenium, with the console in the orchestra pit.
The instrument had an automatic roll player in a separate cabinet and a console with Estey’s recent invention, the “luminous piston stop control.” These were lighted buttons placed in rows above the top manual of the console. When pushed, the button lit up signifying that that particular stop was on. Another push turned the stop off. This system presented all sorts of problems; it was inconvenient to use, the “luminous piston” was difficult to see under bright lights, it could give an organist a very nasty shock, and some organists could not resist spelling out naughty words with the lights.
The organ had a clear, pleasant sound in the auditorium’s good acoustics due possibly to Estey’s local representative Charles McQuigg, a former voicer of the Murray M. Harris Company, who installed and finished the instrument. Crowning the full organ was a reedless Tuba Mirabilis voiced on 15″ wind pressure, an invention of William Haskell of the Estey Company. The pipes looked like an open wood flute, but sounded like a stringy Horn Diapason. It was a rather convincing sound, until one knew the secret.
Classes in organ instruction were offered at Poly High, the instrument was used for recitals and public events held in the auditorium, and the roll player was used to play transcriptions of orchestral works for music education classes.
The organ eventually fell silent due to lack of use, lack of maintenance, and problems with the luminous pistons. When the auditorium was refurbished in 1979, the organ was removed so that the chamber openings could be used for stage lighting trees. It was sold, put into storage, and eventually broken up for parts.

Poly-Technic High School
Estey Organ Company, 1924, Opus 2225

GREAT
8′ Open Diapason I
8′ Open Diapason II
8′ Dulciana
8′ Gemshorn
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Melodia
4′ Flute Harmonic
8′ Tuba
Harp

SWELL
16′ Bourdon
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Salicional
8′ Viole d’Orchestre
8′ Viole Celeste
8′ Stopped Diapason
4′ Flauto Traverso
8′ Oboe (reedless)
8′ Cornopean
8′ Vox Humana
Tremolo
Chimes

CHOIR
8′ Violin Diapason
8′ Viol d’Amour
8′ Clarabella
8′ Unda Maris
4′ Flute d’Amour
8′ Clarinet (reedless)
Tremolo

SOLO
8′ Stentorphone
8′ Gross Gamba
8′ First Violins III
8′ Concert Flute
4′ Wald Flute
2′ Piccolo
8′ Orchestral Oboe
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (reedless)

PEDAL
32′ Resultant
16′ Open Diapason
16′ Bourdon
16′ Lieblich Gedackt (Sw)
8′ Bass Flute
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)

The Uplifter’s Club
One of a number of organs installed in Los Angeles’s private clubs was this instrument built by the Skinner Organ Company in 1924 for the Uplifter’s Club. Located in the remote Santa Monica Canyon section of Los Angeles, the club was formed in 1913 as a splinter group of the Los Angeles Athletic Club by a number of wealthy members, for “high jinx.”9 Recreational facilities were constructed in the canyon and some members built cabins and cottages to use for weekend retreats.
In 1923 construction on a large clubhouse began and in 1924 the three-manual Skinner organ was installed. The instrument was a large residence-style organ with many duplexed stops and a roll player mechanism. The organ provided music for the relaxation of members, music for skits and plays, and occasionally a local organist was invited in to play a recital of light selections.
During World War II the club began selling off its holdings, and by 1947, it had disbanded. The organ was sold to the First Methodist Church of Glendale, where it was treated to a number of indignities to make the instrument more suitable for church use, the result being at great odds with the original intent of the organ.

The Uplifter’s Club
Skinner Organ Company, 1924, Opus 449

MANUAL I
8′ Diapason
8′ Chimney Flute
8′ Gedackt
8′ Violoncello
8′ Voix Celestes II rks
8′ Flute Celestes II rks
4′ Orchestral Flute
4′ Unda Maris II rks
8′ Vox Humana
8′ French Horn
8′ Tuba
Tremolo
Harp
Celesta
Chimes
Kettle Drums

MANUAL II
8′ Chimney Flute
8′ Violoncello
4′ Orchestral Flute
8′ Corno d’Amore
8′ English Horn
8′ Vox Humana
8′ French Horn
8′ Tuba
Tremolo
Chimes
Kettle Drums

MANUAL III
8′ Diapason
8′ Voix Celestes II rks
8′ Flute Celestes II rks
8′ Gedackt
4′ Unda Maris II rks
Tremolo
Harp
Celesta
Piano (prepared)

PEDAL
16′ Bourdon
16′ Echo Lieblich
16′ Gedackt
8′ Still Gedackt
16′ Trombone (Tuba)

The Elks Club
Located just off the fashionable Wilshire Corridor facing Westlake Park was the Elks Club, a 12-story building constructed in 1926 to contain a lodge hall, dining rooms, lounges, swimming pool, tennis and racquetball courts, a full gymnasium, and residential facilities for members. Entering the building, one encountered a monumental reception hall some 50 feet in height, with a vaulted ceiling painted with scenes from mythology. A wide staircase rose dramatically to the Memorial Room that functioned as a lobby for the lodge room.
On the front page of the Van Nuys News for November 18, 1924 was an article announcing “H. P. Platt, manager of the Robert-Morton Organ Company, announces that his concern has been awarded a contract for constructing a huge pipe organ to be placed in the new Elks Temple of Los Angeles. Specifications for the huge organ will make it the largest unified orchestra pipe organ in the United States. The contract price was said to be $50,000.”
“Unified orchestra pipe organ” is probably the best description for the four-manual, 60-rank organ that the Robert-Morton firm installed in the Elks Club in 1926. The stops are divided into Great, Swell, Choir, Solo and Pedal divisions, but the contents of each are not what one would expect in either a concert or theatre organ.
The main organ is in four chambers, one in each corner of the lodge room, with Echo and Antiphonal divisions speaking through openings centered over the entrance doors. These two divisions were heard in either the lodge room or the Memorial Room by means of dual expression shades. A two-manual console in the Memorial Room played the Echo/Antiphonal divisions so an organist could entertain lodge members lingering in the Memorial area before a meeting without the sound penetrating into the lodge room.
Currently, the instrument is unplayable. The two-manual console has been disconnected and although the four-manual console remains in position, over half of the ivories are missing. Workmen stomping through the pipe chambers on various occasions have trod on many of the smaller pipes, a few sets are missing, and water leaks have damaged other portions of the organ.
Stepping back in time to happier days, we can read about the organ when it was the talk of organ-playing Los Angeles. In December, 1925, a Los Angeles newspaper reported “the new $50,000 organ for the Elk’s great temple will be given its official test before officers of the Elk’s Building Association tomorrow evening. The test recital will be at the plant of the Robert-Morton Organ Company, builders of the instrument. For the benefit of members of the lodge and the public, the recital will be broadcast over KNX radio between 7 and 7:30 o’clock. A half an hour of cathedral and concert music will be played on the huge instrument by Sibley Pease, official organist of the Elk’s lodge.”10
In May 1926, Warren Allen, organist of Stanford University, gave the opening recital, playing compositions by Bach, Boccherini, Saint-Saëns, Douglas, Wagner and ending with the Finale from Vierne’s Symphony No. 1. A reviewer noted that “the organ is an instrument of concert resources and full organ is almost overpowering in tone. It ranks as one of the finest in the city.”11
For many years the organ was used almost every day of the week for lodge meetings, concerts and radio broadcasts. Dwindling membership and the expense of upkeep on the huge Elks building caused the remaining members to find smaller quarters in the late 1960s. Left abandoned for a while, the building has seen use as a YMCA, a retirement center, and a seedy hotel; it is currently being rented for large social events and filming. Due to the extensive damage done to the organ and the great expense of a restoration, this is probably another large, once-popular instrument that will never play again.

Elks Temple, Los Angeles
Robert-Morton Organ Company, 1926

GREAT
16′ Open Diapason
16′ Gamba (TC)
8′ First Diapason
8′ Second Diapason
8′ Tuba
8′ French Horn
8′ Kinura
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Clarinet
8′ Doppel Flute
8′ Gamba
8′ Violin I
8′ Violin II
8′ Violin III
8′ Quintadena
8′ Dulciana
4′ Tuba Clarion
4′ Octave Diapason
4′ Doppel Flute
22⁄3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
III Cornet
Harp
Glockenspiel
Xylophone
Chimes
Strings F
Great 2nd Touch
8′ Tuba
8′ French Horn
8′ Gross Flute
8′ Gamba

SWELL
16′ Contra Fagotto
16′ Tibia Clausa
16′ Swell Bourdon
16′ Violin (TC)
8′ Trumpet
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Violin
8′ Tibia Mollis
8′ Tibia Clausa
8′ Gedackt
8′ Orchestral Oboe
8′ Vox Humana
8′ Violin I
8′ Violin II
8′ Violin III
8′ Viol d’Orchestre
8′ Viole Celeste
8′ Salicional
8′ Aeoline
4′ Octave Diapason
4′ Tibia Clausa
4′ Bourdon Flute
4′ Flauto Traverso
4′ Vox Humana
4′ Violina
4′ Salicet
22⁄3′ Bourdon Nazard
2′ Bourdon Piccolo
Harp
Glockenspiel
Xylophone
Chimes
Bird
Strings P
Strings MF
Swell 2nd Touch
16′ Fagotto
16′ Trumpet (TC)
16′ Bourdon
8′ Tibia Clausa
4′ Flauto Traverso

CHOIR
16′ Violin (TC)
16′ Double Dulciana
8′ English Diapason
8′ Flugel Horn
8′ Clarabella
8′ Clarinet
8′ Gemshorn
8′ Viola
8′ Violin I
8′ Violin II
8′ Violin III
8′ Dulciana
8′ Unda Maris
4′ Harmonic Flute
4′ Violina
4′ Dulcet
2′ Flageolet
2′ Dolcissimo
Snare Drum Tap
Snare Drum Roll
Tom-Tom
Castanets
Sleigh Bells
Wood Drum
Tambourine
Strings F
Choir 2nd Touch
8′ English Diapason
8′ Flugel Horn
8′ Clarabella
8′ Clarinet

SOLO
8′ Tuba Mirabilis
8′ Stentorphone
8′ Philomela
8′ Gross Gamba
8′ Oboe Horn
4′ Tuba Clarion
4′ Gambette
Chimes

ANTIPHONAL
8′ Trumpet
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Hohl Flute

ECHO
16′ Echo Bourdon
8′ Night Horn
8′ Flute Celeste
8′ Viol Sordino
8′ Vox Humana
4′ Fern Flute
4′ Violetta
Bird

PEDAL
32′ Resultant Bass
16′ Double Open Diapason
16′ Trombone
16′ Pedal Bourdon
16′ Swell Bourdon
16′ Echo Bourdon
16′ Contra Fagotto
16′ Violone
16′ Dulciana
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Tuba
8′ Pedal Flute
8′ Doppel Flute
8′ Echo Bourdon
8′ Cello
8′ Dulciana
4′ Tuba Clarion
4′ Dulcet
III Cornet

Pedal 2nd touch
Bass Drum
Snare Drum
Tympani
Bass Drum/Cymbal
Buttons Above Solo
Klaxon
Telephone
Cow Bell
Bird
Tremolos
Swell
Great
Choir
Solo
Antiphonal
Echo
Swell Vox Humana
Echo Vox Humana
Couplers
Pedal Octaves
Great to Pedal 8, 4
Swell to Pedal 8, 4
Choir to Pedal 8
Solo to Pedal 8
Swell to Swell 16, 4
Choir to Swell 16, 8, 4
Solo to Swell 16, 8, 4
Great to Great 16, 4
Swell to Great 16, 8, 4
Choir to Great 16, 8, 4
Solo to Great 16, 8, 4
Choir to Choir 16, 4
Swell to Choir 16, 8, 4
Solo to Solo 16, 4

Barker Brothers
Barker Brothers, the pre-eminent home furnishings store of Los Angeles, moved into a new building in 1927. Occupying all of 7th Street between Flower and Figueroa Streets, the 12-story façade was in Renaissance Revival style and loosely patterned after the Strozzi Palace in Florence. Entering through the main doors, the visitor stepped into a 40′ high lobby court furnished with leather sofas and chairs, oriental carpets, and a decorated vaulted ceiling.
During the 1920s, Barker Brothers served as the southern California representative for the Welte Organ Company. Their previous store had a Welte organ used to entertain customers, and when Barkers moved out, the instrument was rebuilt into two organs; the main section went, with a new console, to the Pasadena home of Baldwin M. Baldwin, and the Echo division, also provided with a new console, was packed off to Mrs. Belle Malloy in San Pedro.
Barker Brothers’ new store had three Welte organs. In the lobby court was a four-manual, 26-rank concert organ that was played daily for the store’s patrons. The four-manual drawknob console was centered along the east side of the lobby and the chamber openings high on the wall had gold display pipes. A three-manual, nine-rank theatre-style instrument was in a 600-seat auditorium on the 10th floor, and a two-manual, 10-rank organ with player attachment was installed in the interior design studio.
On the evening of March 28, 1927, the three Welte organs were dedicated, beginning with the instrument in the lobby court and then moving to the auditorium organ, where members of the Los Angeles Organists’ Club entertained. Guests were invited to hear the residence organ in the interior design department and enjoy the automatic roll player device.
Among the organists playing the lobby court organ on that evening were Albert Hay Malotte and Alexander Schreiner. Malotte played Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto, but Schreiner no doubt stole the show when he played the “Great” g-minor fugue of Bach and closed the program with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.12
The lobby court organ was very popular with Los Angeles residents and the daily recitals were well attended. Welte designed the instrument for maximum flexibility; the Great and Choir shared stops, while the Swell and Solo were independent divisions, except for the Great Tuba Sonora that was available on the Solo at 16′, 8′ and 4′ pitches.
When the Welte Organ Company closed in 1931, the residence organ was sold to a home in the Brentwood section of the city. The auditorium instrument was eventually sold to the Presbyterian Church in La Canada, but the lobby court organ was kept in use until the early 1950s. After the Second World War, the daily organ recitals were popular with older folks who lived in affordable but respectable downtown residential hotels. The store management felt having pensioners strewn about the lobby lowered the tone of their upscale operation and removed the organ in 1955, selling the console to a private party and the pipe work to a local church.
There was a more insidious reason for removing the Welte organ. Barker Brothers had become the local agents for the new Hammond Chord Organ and didn’t want competition from the “real thing” while an employee was demonstrating the new electric device. The Los Angeles Times for May 12, 1955 announced: “A musical tradition at Barker Bros. has been broken! Barker Bros. pipe organ of some 30 odd years vintage is no longer the cornerstone of the store’s tradition. One fine day it was an impressive part of the main lobby and the next day, the massive monolith was a legend. A compact, sweet little number, modern in design and execution, has replaced the pipe organ. The Hammond Chord Organ now reigns supreme. A representative from Barker’s Piano Salon on the mezzanine floor is in daily attendance at his Chord Organ post.”

Barker Brothers Store
Lobby Court Organ
Welte Organ Company, 1927

GREAT
16′ Double Open Diapason
8′ Principal Diapason
8′ English Diapason
8′ Tibia Minor
8′ Claribel Flute
8′ Viola
4′ Octave
4′ Forest Flute
8′ Tuba Sonora
Harp
Celesta
Piano

SWELL
16′ Lieblich Gedackt
8′ Diapason Phonon
8′ Philomela
8′ Gedackt
8′ Violin II rks
8′ Solo Violin
8′ Salicional
8′ Vox Angelica
4′ Chimney Flute
22⁄3′ Nazard
2′ Flautino
13⁄5′ Tierce
16′ Contra Fagotto
8′ Trumpet
8′ Oboe Horn
8′ Vox Humana
4′ Octave Oboe
Tremolo
Vox Humana Vibrato
Harp
Celesta
Piano

CHOIR
16′ Contra Viol
8′ English Diapason
8′ Tibia Minor
8′ Claribel Flute
8′ Flute Celeste
8′ Viola
8′ Muted Violin
8′ Voix Celeste
8′ Viola
4′ Traverse Flute
2′ Piccolo
8′ Clarinet
Tremolo
Choir 2nd Touch
8′ Principal Diapason
8′ Tibia Minor
8′ Tuba Sonora
8′ Clarinet
Celesta
Chimes
Solo to Choir
Swell to Choir

SOLO
8′ Tibia Clausa
8′ Violoncello
4′ Harmonic Flute
16′ Tuba Profunda
8′ Tuba Sonora
8′ French Horn
8′ English Horn
4′ Cornet
Tremolo
Harp
Celesta
Chimes
Piano

PEDAL
32′ Acoustic Bass
16′ Diaphonic Diapason
16′ Bourdon
16′ Violone (Gt)
16′ Lieblich Gedackt (Sw)
8′ Octave
8′ Flute
8′ Cello (Gt)
8′ Gedackt (Sw)
16′ Tuba Profunda (Solo)
8′ Tuba Sonora (Solo)
4′ Cornet (Solo)
16′ Piano
8′ Piano
Chimes

Organ studios, residences,
theaters
During the 1920s, many American organ builders maintained organ studios in Los Angeles to provide prospective customers with a sample of their wares. The studio usually featured a residence-style organ, complete with automatic player, in a home-like setting. The Skinner Organ Company went so far as to install a residence organ in the home of their local representative, Stanley W. Williams.13 The Aeolian Company displayed their Opus 1740 in the George Birkel Music Company, where fine pianos and phonographs were also available. Wurlitzer had a studio in downtown Los Angeles and a second showroom in the posh Ambassador Hotel, where they installed a Style R16, three-manual, ten-rank residence organ. In an overstuffed room off the hotel’s main lobby, patrons of the hotel could relax and listen to organ music presented several times a day by a member of the Wurlitzer staff.
Residence organs were popular additions to many of the fine homes built in Los Angeles before the Depression hit. Members of the movie colony enjoyed organs in their homes, and the Robert-Morton Company built instruments for Thomas Ince, for Marion Davies’s immense beach house, and for Charlie Chaplin, who used the organ to compose most of the music for his films.
Aeolian had organs in the homes of Harold Lloyd, cowboy actor Dustin Farnum, and Francis Marion Thompson, in addition to instruments in the residences of radio pioneer Earle C. Anthony, oil baron Lee Phillips, department store mogul Arthur Letts, and Willits Hole, who had an Aeolian organ in the art gallery wing of his Fremont Place mansion.
The Estey Organ Company’s sole contribution to the film colony was a small four-rank unified organ in the Hollywood home of “Keystone Kop” Chester Conklin.
There were a number of Welte residence organs scattered around Los Angeles, including a two-manual instrument in the home of John Evans, a property later owned by actress Ann Sheridan and Liberace. The large Welte organ in Lynn Atkinson’s exquisite Louis XVI-style home was in a ballroom that opened onto terraced gardens. The exterior of the estate was used as the television home of the “Beverly Hillbillies,” although the then-current owner finally tossed out the production company because too many tourists were knocking on the front door wanting to meet Jed Clampett.
The largest residence organ in Los Angeles was in the 62-acre estate of Silsby Spalding. The Aeolian organ (Opus 1373) had three manuals, six divisions, a 32′ Open Diapason, and 67 ranks of pipes. It was installed in the Spalding’s large music room in 1919 and spoke through three tall arches faced with ornamental metal grilles.
Two very exclusive and elegant apartment buildings in Los Angeles each had a Robert-Morton organ in the living room of the largest apartment. “La Ronda” and the “Andalusia” were both located on Havenhurst Drive and built in the Spanish style with enclosed gardens and fountains surrounding the apartments. The organ in the Andalusia had four ranks of pipes, a roll playing mechanism plus xylophone, marimba, chimes, celesta, and a small toy counter. La Ronda’s Robert-Morton organ had five ranks of pipes, no roll player, and fewer percussion stops.
There were a number of secular organs that had been planned toward the end of the 1920s, but were never built, and one could argue that with several of the instruments, their early demise was a desirable thing.
During the 1920s, Charles Winder ran the Artcraft Organ Company, a small firm that built garden-variety organs for neighborhood churches throughout southern California. In 1926 Winder announced the formation of a new company, The Symphonaer Company, to build “symphony concert organs.” The announcement continued: “The Symphonaer Concert Organ is described as an instrument that reproduces the true symphony orchestra, giving the effect of every instrument used in the largest of symphony orchestras.” A $1,000,000 plant was to be built offering employment to 100 craftsmen. Joining the venture was the British concert organist Edwin Lemare, who would serve as director of music and specifications. Built alongside the factory would be Symphonaer Hall, a recital hall equipped with a large Symphonaer organ, where Lemare would give frequent recitals and broadcast the instrument over a local radio station.14 The enterprise died in the planning stages and the Artcraft Organ Company went broke in 1928.
Alexander Pantages ordered a five-manual Robert-Morton organ for his spectacular Hollywood Pantages Theatre that opened in 1930. Although the theater was and still is a success, the organ was never built due to the advent of sound films, an expensive lawsuit in which Pantages was involved, and the closing of the Robert-Morton Company. The four large organ chambers remain empty to this day.
The Hollywood Bowl, the world’s largest natural amphitheater, is used as a popular venue for summer concerts, accommodating audiences of up to 18,000. The Hollywood Bowl program for July, 1929, published a letter from the Bowl manager relating that organist Edwin Lemare was working to interest the Hollywood Bowl Association in installing an outdoor organ in the amphitheater. The letter went on to state that Lemare had prevailed on an organ builder to install an organ in the Bowl provided that $10,000 was spent to build enclosures for the instrument.15 Fortunately, the scheme never progressed past the planning stage.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
In the late 1920s, the Welte Organ Company submitted a proposal to the Civic Bureau of Music and Art of Los Angeles to build a five-manual outdoor organ for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.16 The Coliseum, opened in 1923, covers a total of 17 acres and originally seated 76,000. Although there is nothing in the proposal stating where the organ would be located in the huge stadium, concrete enclosures may have been planned in and around the Peristyle, a focal point along the east end of the huge structure.
The installation of an organ in the Coliseum would have been an even greater acoustical nightmare than an organ in the Hollywood Bowl. Among the features of the proposed specification was a fifth manual called “Orchestral” that was home to four separately enclosed divisions, Diapason, Brass, String and Woodwind, three of which had their own pedal sections. The console would have stopkeys placed on angled jambs and a remote combination action. Nothing ever came of the proposal, and the 1929 stock market crash and closing of the Welte Corporation in 1931 sealed the instrument’s fate.
The proposal reads:

The Welte Organ Company, Inc., hereby agrees to build for the Civic Bureau of Music and Art, Los Angeles, California; herein referred to as Purchaser, and to install in the Coliseum, Los Angeles, California—ONE WELTE PIPE ORGAN. Ready to use and in accordance with the following specifications, viz: Manuals, five, compass CC to C4, 61 notes; Pedals, compass CCC to G, 32 notes; the windchests of manuals affected by octave couplers to be extended one octave above the compass of the keyboard, to 73 notes. Electro-pneumatic action throughout. Philharmonic pitch A-440. Console type, concert; stop control, stopkeys and tablets. Combination action adjustable at the console, visibly affecting the registers. Remote control inside setter.

Los Angeles Coliseum

GREAT - Manual II
16′ Double Diapason
16′ Bourdon
8′ First Diapason
8′ Second Diapason
8′ Third Diapason
8′ Violoncello
8′ Double Flute
8′ Clarabella
51⁄3′ Quint
4′ First Octave
4′ Second Octave
4′ Third Octave
4′ Tibia Plena
4′ Harmonic Flute
31⁄5′ Tenth
22⁄3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
V Plein Jeu
V Cymbale
16′ Double Trumpet
8′ Tromba
4′ Clarion
8′ Grand Piano
4′ Grand Piano
Minor Chimes
Great 2nd Touch
Diapason Section
Brass Section
String Section
Woodwind Section
Solo to Great 8
Tower Chime
2′ Glockenspiel

SWELL - Manual III
16′ Quintaton
16′ Contra Viola
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Horn Diapason
8′ Viola da Gamba
8′ Salicional
8′ Voix Celeste
8′ Tibia Clausa
8′ Harmonic Flute
4′ Octave
4′ Geigen Principal
4′ Salicet II rks
4′ Flute Couverte
4′ Traverse Flute
31⁄5′ Tenth
22⁄3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
2′ Piccolo
VI Mixture
16′ Contra Posaune
8′ Cornopean
8′ Trumpet
8′ Oboe Horn
8′ Vox Humana II rks
4′ Clarion
8′ Grand Piano
4′ Grand Piano
Swell 2nd Touch
Diapason Section
Brass Section
String Section
Woodwind Section
Solo to Swell 8
Chimes
2′ Glockenspiel

CHOIR - Manual I
16′ Waldhorn
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Waldhorn
8′ Tibia Minor
8′ Viol d’Orchestre
8′ Violes Celestes II rks
8′ Claribel Flute
8′ Quintaphon
4′ Octave
4′ Wald Flute
4′ Violin
22⁄3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
2′ Flageolet
13⁄5′ Seventeenth
11⁄7′ Septieme
1′ Twenty-Second
16′ Contra Fagotto
8′ Clarinet
8′ Vox Humana II rks
4′ Clarion
Minor Chimes
2′ Glockenspiel
8′ Grand Piano
4′ Grand Piano
2′ Xylophone
Snare Drum, Tap
Snare Drum, Roll
Choir 2nd Touch
Diapason Section
Brass Section
String Section
Woodwind Section
Solo to Choir
Chimes
2′ Glockenspiel
Snare Drum, Roll
Triangle

SOLO - Manual IV
16′ Violone
8′ Diapason Magna
8′ Tibia Plena
8′ Solo Gamba
8′ Gamba Celestes II rks
8′ Harmonic Flute
4′ Octave
4′ Concert Flute
4′ Solo Violin
III Cornet
16′ Ophicleide
8′ Tuba Mirabilis
8′ Tuba Sonora
8′ Military Trumpet
8′ French Horn
8′ Orchestral Oboe
4′ Clarion

ORCHESTRAL - Manual V
Diapason Section
16′ Major Diapason
8′ Double Languid Diapason I
8′ Double Languid Diapason II
8′ Diapason Phonon
8′ Open Diapason
8′ Geigen Principal
4′ Double Languid Octave
4′ Octave
22⁄3′ Twelfth
2′ Fifteenth
11⁄3′ Nineteenth
1′ Twenty-Second
IX Grand Chorus
Diapason Section Pedal
16′ Diaphonic Diapason
16′ Diapason
102⁄3′ Quint
8′ Diapason Octave
8′ Octave
4′ Super Octave

Brass Section
16′ Trombone
16′ Serpent
8′ Tuba Magna
8′ Tuba Sonora
8′ Tuba Mirabilis
8′ French Trumpet
8′ Muted Trumpet
8′ Post Horn
8′ French Horn (closed tone)
8′ French Horn (open tone)
51⁄3′ Corno Quint
4′ Tuba Clarion
4′ Trumpet Clarion
22⁄3′ Corno Twelfth
2′ Cor Octave
Brass Section Pedal
32′ Contra Bombarde
16′ Bombarde
16′ Trombone
8′ Trumpet

String Section
16′ Contra Basso
16′ Violin Diapason
16′ Contra Viola
8′ Violin Diapason
8′ Violin Diapason Celeste
8′ Violoncello I
8′ Violoncello II
8′ Cello Celestes II rks
8′ Nazard Gamba
8′ Gamba Celeste
8′ First Violin
8′ Second Violin
8′ Third Violin
8′ Violin Celestes II rks
8′ First Viola
8′ Second Viola
8′ Viola Celestes II rks
8′ Muted Violins III rks
4′ String Octave
4′ Violins II rks
4′ Muted Violins III rks
2′ String Fifteenth
III Cornet des Violes
String Section Pedal
32′ String Diaphone
16′ Double Bass
16′ Violone
8′ Cello

Woodwind Section
16′ Bassoon
16′ Bass Saxophone
8′ First Saxophone
8′ Second Saxophone
4′ Soprano Saxophone
8′ English Horn
16′ Bass Clarinet
8′ Basset Horn
8′ First Clarinet
8′ Second Clarinet
8′ Orchestral Oboe
8′ Kinura
8′ Orchestral Flute
4′ Solo Flute
2′ Solo Piccolo

PEDAL
64′ Gravissima
32′ Diaphone
32′ Violone
16′ Diaphone
16′ Major Bass
16′ Diapason
16′ Violone
16′ Contra Basso (String)
16′ Tibia Clausa
16′ Wald Horn (Ch)
16′ Bourdon
16′ Contra Viola (String)
102⁄3′ Quint
8′ Diaphone
8′ Principal
8′ Octave
8′ Violoncello
8′ Wald Horn (Ch)
8′ Flute
51⁄3′ Octave Quint
4′ Super Octave
4′ Fifteenth
4′ Tibia Flute
V Harmonics
V Fourniture
32′ Contra Bombarde
16′ Bombarde
16′ Tuba Profunda
16′ Serpent (Brass)
16′ Ophicleide (Solo)
16′ Double Trumpet (Gt)
16′ Contra Posaune (Sw)
16′ Contra Fagotto (Ch)
8′ Bombarde
8′ Tuba Sonora
4′ Bombarde
4′ Cornet
16′ Grand Piano
8′ Grand Piano
Bass Drum, Stroke

Pedal 2nd Touch
64′ Gravissima
32′ Diaphone
32′ Contra Bombarde
Solo to Pedal 8
Solo to Pedal 4
Diapason Section 8
Diapason Section 4
Brass Section 8
Brass Section 4
Tower Chimes
Minor Chimes
Thunder Drum, Stroke
Thunder Drum, Roll
Kettle Drum, Roll
Chinese Gong
Persian Cymbal
Vibratos
Choir
Choir Vox Humana
Swell
Swell Vox Humana
Solo
Woodwind
String, Fast
String, Slow

Conclusion
The stories of these instruments testify to the near-ubiquity of the pipe organ early in the twentieth century, including its use in films and stage shows. Even film actors owned and played pipe organs, in a golden age that now survives only in recollections such as this.

A Neglected Chapter in the History of Organbuilding in America

R. E. Coleberd is a contributing editor of The Diapason. An economist and retired petroleum industry executive, he is a director of The Reuter Organ Company.

Pipe organ building in the United States spans over two centuries and totals tens of thousands of instruments. The scope and sweep of the King of Instruments in American culture far exceeds that of other nations and reached its zenith in the first three decades of the last century. Pipe organs were built for hospitals, hotels, yachts, lodge halls, municipal auditoriums, high schools, colleges and universities, churches, private residences, soldiers' homes, theaters, and mortuaries, a category that includes cemetery chapels and mausoleums. These venues can be interpreted as market segments, each with its own characteristics, demand determinants, and time period. The mortuary pipe organ has been totally neglected in the history of organbuilding in this country; none of the well-known studies even mentions it and it is doubtful whether the countless papers written in higher education do either. Perhaps this is not surprising. Conservatively estimated, approximately 600 instruments were built expressly for the funeral industry, accounting for less than two percent of the total output of American builders and even far less in voiced ranks produced.1 Yet a closer look at this product (which the author considers a special instrument), its market and its builders reveals a fascinating epoch which surely belongs in the rich and colorful history of organbuilding in America.

The mortuary pipe organ was a uniquely American product, an instrument whose mechanical features and tonal characteristics departed significantly from the conventional church organ even though its purpose was to provide "churchly" music in a quasi-liturgical setting.2 Its development underscores the entrepreneurship and innovations of American builders who responded to the requirements of the evolving funeral home industry. The heyday of the mortuary pipe organ was over a half century ago: most were built during the 1920s and 1930s; only a few were built after WWII. A surprising number are in use today, routinely serviced and restored as needed.

The Instrument

The mortuary pipe organ as a distinctive instrument was one example of the small, often self-contained instruments developed and marketed by the organbuilding industry in the first three decades of the last century. These instruments marked a milestone in the evolution of the instrument, in the spectrum of keyboard music and in the choice of music media in an institutional setting. The Austin Company, introducing the four-rank Chorophone--"The Ideal Small Pipe Organ"--in 1916, had correctly forecast that a low-cost pipe organ requiring little space would open a vast new market now being supplied by the reed organ or piano. "We have . . . long realized that there is a large demand for an instrument which can be sold for somewhat less than $2,000.00," to quote their sales brochure,3 adding that such an instrument "would be within the reach of a larger number of clients who need a serviceable organ, but are now restricted to the use of a reed organ or piano,"4 an observation which certainly describes a funeral home. The option of a player-attachment greatly enhanced the utility of the instrument and gave it a competitive advantage in the choice of a keyboard medium. Other builders soon followed with small instruments and, borrowing from the automobile industry, named each model (see Wicks box) to increase market awareness and, hopefully, influence buyer selection. Pilcher's was "The Cloister," Möller "The Artiste," Kilgen "The Petite Ensemble," and one of Aeolian-Skinner's numbered series "The Marie Antoinette." These models were ideally suited to the mortuary market.

The new generation of small instruments closely paralleled the mechanical design of the theatre organ in that both required an individual magnet and valve per pipe, based upon what organbuilders refer to as the unit principle. This is a radical departure from the much acclaimed Austin Universal Air Chest and the conventional slider, pitman and ventil windchests found in church organs. In the unit principle, each pipe can be accessed by any manual or pedal key as required, making unification possible. Conversely, in the straight chest system, the electrical impulse from the key contact must work through a matrix of stop and key actions before pipe speech. In addition to its close mechanical similarity, the mortuary instrument also paralleled tonally the emerging theatre organ of the early twentieth century. Each used as its first rank the stopped flute, and the Vox Humana was found early in the stoplists of both of these instruments.

The mortuary instrument was the quintessential unit pipe organ. As few as two ranks could be unified and duplexed into as many as eighteen speaking stops over two manuals and pedal (see Wicks Miniature). The two fundamental flue ranks, found in virtually every mortuary instrument, were the stopped flute, i.e., Bourdon, playable at 16, 8, 4, 22/3, and 2 foot pitches, and the Salicional, customarily playable at 8 and 4 foot pitches and sometimes at 16' TC. Together they provided the required "churchly" sound of the organ, reinforcing the religious nature of the funeral service and meeting the emotional needs of the bereaved. In addition, by combining these two ranks at different pitches, synthetic stops were produced, adding to the tonal palette. When the 22/3' Bourdon is added to the 8' Salicional, the result is an Oboe, a useful solo stop. Combining the 8' Bourdon with its 22/3' extension, the twelfth, produces a Quintadena sound. To give the illusion of greater tonal resources, builders renamed every pitch of a unit rank. This was customary with the stopped flute, but now the Salicional becomes a Contra Viol at 16' TC and a 4' Violina. The third rank in a mortuary organ, with the exception of Wicks, was quite often the Vox Humana. People were accustomed to hearing a quivering Vox Humana in church and theatre organs, and thus it augmented the ambience of a mortuary service. [The Vox Humana appeared to define the pipe organ of the 1920s far more even than the Zimbelstern and Positiv of the 1950s and 60s. In recent decades the horizontal trumpet has become a defining characteristic and almost a necessity.] A fourth rank in a mortuary organ would most likely be a Dulciana or Erzahler and a fifth rank, finally, a Diapason.

The mortuary instrument was, of necessity, a small one given the limited space available in a typical funeral home. Builders recognized the space limitations and developed a product to meet them. Möller, one of the few builders who actively solicited this market, wrote in its brochure describing a three-rank cabinet organ (Bourdon, Salicional, Diapason Conique): "M. P. Möller has developed an organ adequately meeting the requirements of a funeral service and so compact in size and reasonable in price that it finds a place in the equipment of every funeral director."5 The need for compactness is evident throughout the design and construction of the instrument and in the choice of pipe ranks and scales. Builders chose small strings, i.e., the Salicional, Viola and Aeoline, and used a smaller scale throughout the compass of the stopped flute to stay within cabinet dimensions. The most dramatic example of space economy was the use of free reeds in the 16' octave of the stopped flute, found in many cabinet instruments (see photo). These the industry reportedly obtained from Estey, the largest builder of reed organs and a logical supplier.

Perhaps two-thirds of all mortuary organs built were cabinet instruments, often with a player attachment, which could be placed almost anywhere and function effectively. At the James O'Donnell Funeral Home in Hannibal, Missouri, dating back five generations, the 1928 three-rank Wicks cabinet organ is located on a landing on the second floor with the music wafting down the stairway to the services room below.6 Many were installed in attics or wherever space was available. Typical was the 1924 three-rank Schoenstein placed in an alcove above the chapel floor at N. Gray Morticians in San Francisco.7

The Market

The demand for a pipe organ in the mortuary trade grew rapidly in the 1920s and reached its peak in the 1930s although there had been a few installations around the turn of the century. Hook and Hastings built a one-manual, nine-stop instrument, Opus 1246, for the Forest Hills Mortuary Chapel in Boston in 1885, and another one-manual, Opus 2243, for a mortuary in Canandaigua, New York in 1910.8 Hutchings built a two-manual, eight-stop duplexed organ for the West Parish Cemetery Chapel in Andover, Massachusetts in 1907.9

This emerging market coincided with a major shift in funeral services, from the home and church to the mortuary or cemetery chapel, well established by the 1920s.10 Morticians surmised their establishment must contain public rooms for casket selection, viewing and services, far more space than previously required for pre-service preparation. In metropolitan areas spacious facilities were built in popular architectural styles, typically with manicured and lighted lawns and off-street parking. In outlying neighborhoods and small towns, large former private dwellings were often converted into mortuaries. Soon a pipe organ became a competitive necessity, a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses" in a business sense. Möller recognized this in their brochure which read: "Music presents to the progressive mortician an opportunity to enhance his services. Only the dignified, artistic tones of a pipe organ can definitely fulfill the requirements necessary to make music the foremost advertising medium of the mortician."11 The J. P. Seeburg Corporation of Chicago was even more effusive. Advertising in Southern Funeral Director, a leading trade publication, they asked: "Has Your Funeral Home A Soul? What the Soul is to a human so is a Pipe Organ to the mortuary. Without the enthralling presence of its solemn music the service lacks that vital quality--sacred atmosphere."12

Funeral directors, who scarcely knew one organ stop from another, were indifferent to the origin of the instrument or its builder; they were acutely price conscious and were easily satisfied with anything that supplied the required churchly sound. A local market could often be supplied by builders' showrooms or agents. The 1928 Geneva organ in the prestigious Stine & McClure Mortuary in Kansas City, Missouri, restored in recent years by Jerry Dawson, began as a demonstrator on the balcony of the Jenkins Music Company downtown emporium.13 In the 1920s and 1930s a significant trade emerged in used instruments, from private residences and theaters, the latter often repossessed from failed movie houses. The two-manual, three-rank, 16-stop Estey installed in Resurrection Chapel at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, in 1930, had been built for the Estey Studio in Los Angeles and later installed in a local radio station.14 The Style D-Special Wurlitzer built for the American Theater in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1922 was installed in Elderding's Mortuary in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1935.15 Funeral homes became a promising place to unload a repossessed instrument and for the buyer no doubt a bargain. A survey of builder lists reveals that almost anything called a pipe organ could find new life (pun intended) in a mortuary. When Balcom & Vaughan of Seattle installed a three-rank instrument in 1941 in the Stoller Funeral Home in Camas, Washington, it comprised a Wurlitzer console, Morton windchest, Hinners swell shades, a Smith flute and a Kilgen Dulciana and Diapason.16

Builders

Builder response to and participation in the emerging mortuary market varied. The 1920s were a boom time for the industry, and with healthy order books and a substantial backlog, few appear to have directly solicited this business. Table 1 (p. 18) portrays the output of the five largest builders of funeral home organs: Estey, Reuter, Kilgen, Möller and Wicks, who together accounted for over 75 percent of industry production. Möller and Wicks, who booked sales nationwide, built slightly over half (57 percent) of the total. Among other well-known builders of this era, Austin, Casavant and Hinners each built fewer than twenty mortuary organs, like Kilgen mostly in their immediate and neighboring states and provinces, while Hall, Hillgreen-Lane, Kimball, Pilcher and Wangerin-Weickhart each built less than a dozen organs for funeral homes, again mostly nearby.

Eastern builders, notably Skinner and Hook & Hastings, were conspicuously absent from this market. Perhaps they viewed excessive unification, the cornerstone of the mortuary organ, as "low brow," beneath their dignity and carefully cultivated elitist image. More objectively, they were no doubt conscious of the intense price competition, the governing factor in this market, and, otherwise occupied, were not disposed to actively pursue this business, let alone develop a specific product to compete in this market. Austin sold only three organs to funeral homes in the 1920s.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a time of turmoil in the pipe organ industry. Builders struggled to find work; some survived, others failed. The theater, hotel and private residence markets were gone and the church market severely curtailed. Conversely, the mortuary market "boomed" as evidenced by the number of instruments and percent of total built during this decade as shown in Table 1. All builders welcomed funeral home business including Aeolian-Skinner who, in 1936, built a two-manual instrument with Duo-Art Player, Opus 949, for the Hillcrest Mausoleum in Dallas, Texas.17 The next year they installed one of their Marie Antoinette models (see specification), the largest of several unit series, with a curious opus number 30038, in a mortuary chapel in Acton, Massachusetts.18 With seven ranks, fourteen stops and 427 pipes, this instrument is larger and far less unified than customarily found in mortuary organs.

Builders offered financial and other incentives to clinch a sale in this market (perhaps now driven by competitive emulation)--one which ran counter to the severely depressed national economy. When the Reuter Company signed a contract with the Eylar Funeral Home in Kansas City, Missouri, in August, 1938 for a three-rank organ (21 stops plus chimes) for $1,539, the down payment was only 20 percent, the buyer given a 30-day option to accept the organ and a year's free service19 (see also Wicks below). The importance of the funeral home market in this decade to one and perhaps other builders was underscored by John Sperling, recently retired tonal director of Wicks, who commented that during the 1930s mortuary sales accounted for 25 percent or more of Wicks' output.20

The mortuary pipe organ market essentially ended with World War II; only a few pipe instruments were built for this venue in the postwar era. By the end of the 1940s the electronic organ had gained enough acceptance that its lower cost and smaller space appealed to price-conscious funeral directors. Two recent exceptions are the four-rank unit instrument for the Simminger-Book Funeral Home in Cincinnati, Ohio, built by M. W. Lively & Company in 1988,21 and the 65-rank, four-manual organ built by the Quimby Company for the Skyrose Chapel at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California in 1997.22

Wicks

The Wicks Company, founded in 1906 in Highland, Illinois, was the preeminent builder in the mortuary market when measured by the number of instruments produced and the geographical scope of their installations (see Table 1). It is a tribute to the enterprising spirit of this firm that they capitalized on their strengths in the highly competitive pipe organ business to design and build a series of instruments to meet the budget and space requirements of any venue. Actively soliciting this market, the Wicks brochure read: "A field in which Wicks organs serve with special effectiveness is that of the mortuary chapel and funeral home."23 Direct-Electric® action, championed and patented by Wicks, requires much less space than a pouch windchest, and thus is ideally suited for a cabinet instrument or cramped attic installation. Unification and duplexing, the heart of a mortuary instrument, are easily obtained in this individual valve chest. The Wicks business philosophy of being the low cost supplier was a major factor in the intense price competition in this market as were, no doubt, the liberal payment terms, particularly in the 1930s. They largely explain Wicks' notable success in coast to coast sales. For the Drummond instrument in 1937, a Sonatina model plus Vox Humana and chimes (see photo p. 17), priced at $1790.00 less $100 for the former organ, the terms were ten percent down, 30 percent upon installation, and the balance (60 percent) in fourteen equal monthly payments of $70.00 plus interest (not specified).24

Direct-Electric® was the mechanical foundation of the Wicks organ and was emphasized in their mortuary sales publicity. "The mood of mourners and their friends is met by taste in appearance and rich beauty of sound. Direct-Electric® action gives unvarying response to the organist's genius--a quality of dependability under all conditions of temperature and humidity. This exclusive Wicks feature provides a great saving in up-keep for an instrument in frequent daily use. There will be no embarrassing moment in a service by reason of a split leather or membrane, because the Wicks Direct-Electric® control makes no use of these obsolete materials. Swift electric application to every call of the performer brings magic response."25

The prospective Wicks buyer could choose from nine named models, graduated in size and price, with either attached or detached console and optional player attachment. The series began with the Miniature (see box p. 16), a two-manual instrument and the smallest one built, measuring five feet three inches wide, four feet eleven inches deep including console, and five feet six inches high. The 16' octave of the stopped flute was free reeds, and the bottom octave of the Salicional was borrowed from the flute. The Sonata, also a two-rank specification, had pipes in the pedal instead of free reeds and a full compass Salicional. Three-rank instruments included the Symphony, Concerto, Fuga and Fuga DeLuxe. The Rhapsody was a four rank model. The third and fourth ranks were the Open Diapason and Aeoline, the latter a small scale (almost pencil) string chosen, no doubt, for windchest space economy. Wicks' low cost profile explains the absence of the Vox Humana and other reeds in their standard mortuary stoplists, although the Vox Humana and Chimes would be supplied when requested. Reeds require significantly more man-hours to build and to voice not to mention required maintenance with their temperamental tuning and troublesome sensitivity to neglect.

Recognizing the importance of visual as well as tonal ambience in the quality of the funeral setting, Wicks wrote: "The installation of a Wicks in your chapel will be tailored to your individual situation in design, location, size and coloring."26 In addition to the choices among tonal resources and cabinet dimensions, the buyer could select from Gothic, Roman and General grills. Wicks developed a user friendly device called an Automatic Pedal Accompaniment wherein the bass note of a chord on a manual plays the 16' Bourdon pipe in the Pedal and thus "it is impossible to play the incorrect pedal note if the manuals are properly played,"27 no doubt an important feature for pianists turned organists. The development of standardized models for sale to mortuaries continued into the early 1940s when one-manual, three-rank organs were built in groups of five. Ten groups were built.28

Summary

The mortuary pipe organ occupies a small niche in the pantheon of the King of Instruments. In the history of organbuilding, its development is a further illustration of the fundamentals of market segments and the demand for keyboard music in a specific institutional setting in the twentieth century. It is another example of the broad sweep of the pipe organ and keyboard music in American culture and western civilization, and a testimony to the eloquence of organ music in the funeral service. The American organbuilding industry, long known for its mechanical and tonal innovation, produced an instrument that met the stringent tonal, space and cost requirements of funeral homes so successfully that it displaced the reed organ and piano, leading to the sale of several hundred instruments to funeral homes. Together with other small organs they contributed significantly to builder survival in the dark days of the Great Depression.

For research assistance and critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper the author gratefully acknowledges: Gordon Auchincloss, E. A. Boadway, Jerry Dawson, Barbara George, Brent Johnson, Richard Kichline, Allen Kinzey, Larry Leonard, David Lewis, Charles McManis, George Nelson, Albert Neutel, Michael Quimby, Dorothy Schaake, Elizabeth Schmitt, Jack Sievert, John Sperling, Georg Steinmeyer, Robert Vaughan, and R. E. Wagner.

Wicks Miniature

Analysis

8' Flute 85 pipes (1-85)

8' Salicional 61 pipes (13-73)

16' Sub Bass 12 reeds (1-12, free reeds)

Console attached, Tremolo, Crescendo Pedal, Swell Pedal

Organ Space:  5 feet 6 inches high, 5 feet 3 inches wide, 4 feet 11 inches deep including console

2 ranks, 18 speaking stops, 146 pipes

GREAT ORGAN

16' Bourdon T. C.

8' Flute

8' Salicional

4' Flute d'Amour

4' Violina

2' Piccolo

SWELL ORGAN

16' Bourdon T.C.

8' Stopped Flute

8' Viola

8' Quintadena (Syn)

4' Flute

4' Violina

22/3' Nazard

8' Oboe (syn)

PEDAL ORGAN

16' Sub Bass

8' Gedeckt

4' Flute

4' Violina

Wicks Rhapsody

Analysis

8' Open Diapason 61 pipes (1-61)

8' Flute 85 pipes (1-85)

8' Salicional 73 pipes (1-73)

8' Aeoline 61 pipes (1-61)

16' Bourdon 12 pipes (1-12)

Console attached or detached, Tremolo, Crescendo Pedal, Swell Pedal, Automatic Pedal Accompaniment. This model sometimes included a switch wired for 20 chimes starting at 4' A (note 22 on the keyboard).

Organ Space (detached console): 8 feet 10 inches high, 7 feet 4 inches wide, 4 feet 6 inches deep

4 ranks, 28 speaking stops, 292 pipes

GREAT ORGAN

16' Bourdon

16' Contra Viol T. C.

8' Open Diapason

8' Flute

8' Salicional

8' Aeoline

4' Flute d'Amour

4' Violina

22/3' Twelfth

2' Piccolo

Blank Tablet (for future addition of chimes)

SWELL ORGAN

16' Bourdon

16' Contra Viol T. C.

8' Open Diapason

8' Stopped Diapason

8' Viola

8' Aeoline

8' Quintadena (Syn)

4' Flute

4' Violina

22/3' Nazard

2' Piccolo

8' Oboe (syn)

Blank Tablet

PEDAL ORGAN

16' Bourdon

8' Open Diapason

8' Gedeckt

8' Cello

8' Aeoline

4' Flute

The Odyssey of an Organbuilder

R. E. Coleberd, an economist and retired petroleum industry executive, is a contributing editor of The Diapason.

Introduction

The careers of numerous American organbuilders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are the story of a journey—from Europe to the United States or from shop to shop. From Germany came George Kilgen and Philipp Wirsching; from England John T. Austin, Octavius Marshall, and Henry Pilcher. In the U.S., Adolph Reuter’s sojourn took him from Barckhoff to Pilcher, Verney, Casavant (South Haven), and Wicks before he founded his own firm first in Trenton, Illinois, and then Lawrence, Kansas. A. G. Sparling moved from Lyon & Healy to Stevens to Holtkamp. These individuals and their firms are typical of the rich and colorful history of pipe organ building in America. Yet perhaps none of them comes close to the odyssey of Stanley Wyatt Williams 1881–1971 (see photo). Williams’ lifetime spans the arc of his era—from Robert Hope-Jones to G. Donald Harrison (Aeolian-Skinner) with stops at Electrolian, Wirsching, Murray Harris, Robert-Morton, Kimball, and E. M. Skinner. His talents as a voicer and tonal finisher played a pivotal role in the succession of nameplates in the U.S. West Coast pipe organ industry, and his stellar reputation led to important sales by recognized national builders.

Early Life

Stanley Wyatt Williams was born in London on October 29, 1881, the youngest of four sons and two daughters of George Edward Williams, who described himself as a “gentleman,” having made a comfortable living in the brewing industry. His family was musical; his mother sang a solo for Queen Victoria, and each of the sons was taught a musical instrument.1 As he recalled many years later: “I was always a little bit crazy about organs, not that I knew anything about them.”2 After attending the Mostyn House School in Cheshire and the Whitgift Grammar School at Croydon, Surrey, he enrolled in Dulwich College (southeast of London), founded in 1619.3 G. Donald Harrison graduated from there some years later. Suffering a health setback, Williams withdrew from school on the advice of a London physician.4 In the ensuing soul-searching, a well-known London organist, Charles Lawrence, took him to see an organbuilder and the instrument in the builder’s home. “That interested me more than ever,” he later commented, and he determined to become an organbuilder.5 His daughter, Mary Cowell, recalled that the family apparently was none too pleased with his choice of vocation, considering organbuilding a “trade” and thus beneath the dignity of their aristocratic image.6 Nonetheless his father paid the two or three hundred pounds required to enroll him as an apprentice to the legendary organbuilder, Robert Hope-Jones.7

An electrical engineer by profession who held an important position with the National Telephone Company in Liverpool, Hope-Jones was organist and choirmaster of St. John’s Church in Birkenhead, across the Mersey River from Liverpool. With local financial backing he organized the Hope-Jones Organ Company in Birkenhead, building instruments first in the factory of Norman & Beard in Norwich, and then in the Ingram, Hope-Jones shop in Hereford.8 Williams joined him in 1899 at age 18 (see photo, page 25). He couldn’t have found a better teacher or a more prophetic environment in which to acquire organbuilding skills and prepare for what would become a most interesting career. “As an apprentice . . . I was assigned to work at every phase of organ building. I voiced, I carpentered, I electrified—everything about organbuilding had to be learned. It was something I was later very grateful for.”9 “Not only a genius, but a great teacher,” said Williams of Hope-Jones: “He taught all of us to think for ourselves.”10

The controversial and enigmatic Hope-Jones would exert a profound and far-reaching influence on the King of Instruments through his revolutionary tonal and mechanical innovations. He pioneered what would emerge as the symphonic-orchestral voicing paradigm that swept the American industry in the 1920s. This type of instrument was marked by an ensemble of different tonal groups all at the same pitch, in contrast to the time-honored chorus of different pitches within the same tonal family. Mixtures and mutations were discarded and replaced with unison voices of comparatively wide or narrow scale pipes on higher wind pressures. The entire instrument was enclosed.11 Hope-Jones’s mechanical inventions included double-touch, a key characteristic of theatre organs, and high resistance electro-magnets requiring very little current.12

After completing shop routines, Williams joined the road crew and worked on the organ in the Hereford cathedral. There he met and fell in love with Isabel Robbins, whom he would marry in January 1908. When Hope-Jones immigrated to the United States in the spring of 1903, Stanley elected to remain with the former partner, Eustace Ingram, finishing instruments then under construction. A fellow worker asked whether he had ever considered moving to the States, and told him that an American firm, the Electrolian Company of Hoboken, New Jersey, was looking for a voicer. He interviewed, accepted an offer, and bidding farewell to his sweetheart in Hereford crossed the Atlantic in 1906.13 Williams was to be among several former Hope-Jones apprentices who came to America.14

The Land of Opportunity

Voicers are the cornerstone of any organbuilding enterprise. Stanley Williams was called to voice and finish instruments built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company, now relocated to Hoboken and renamed the Electrolian Organ Company.15 He installed and finished the Electrolian-built 19-rank, two-manual and pedal instrument in the Wolcott School in Denver, Colorado (among whose pupils was Mamie Dowd, the future wife of President Dwight Eisenhower), and finished an instrument built for a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. His reputation as a gifted voicer and finisher soon became well-known, for, as he later recounted, when he returned from Philadelphia to Hoboken, seven job offers awaited him.16 The Electrolian assets were next acquired by the legendary Philipp Wirsching of Salem, Ohio, whom Stanley met when he finished the instrument Wirsching built in 1907 for Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church in Hoboken.17 Wirsching moved the business to Ohio, and Stanley joined him there.

Among the Electrolian assets Wirsching acquired was a contract for a two-manual and pedal organ with player attachment for the new palace of the Maharaja of Mysore, India. In January 1908, Williams returned to England, married his sweetheart Isabel, and in July the couple set sail for India to install the organ, traveling through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal.18 This was to be the “Great Adventure,” surely one of the most fantastic episodes (see photo, page 25) in the history of organbuilding the world over, and long a familiar topic of conversation in the rich folklore of the industry (see James Stark and Charles Wirsching Jr., The Great Adventure, forthcoming). Stanley and Isabel returned to England in January 1910, and in March sailed for America where Stanley resumed work with Wirsching.

While finishing an instrument in Terre Haute, Indiana, Williams received a telegram from the Murray M. Harris Organ Company in Los Angeles asking him to come to the West Coast to finish voicing the instrument they were building for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Los Angeles19 (see stoplist). Charles McQuigg, the Harris head voicer, had left the company, no doubt mindful of its precarious financial condition.20 Williams responded, completed the assignment, and returned to Ohio. Then the Harris people, having recognized his skills and eager to maintain their reputation for fine instruments, offered him the head voicer position in the newly reorganized firm. Williams accepted and moved to Los Angeles in 1911 where he would remain for the balance of his career. As David Lennox Smith, Harris scholar, observed: “the most notable addition to the staff of the Murray M. Harris Company in its final years was Stanley Wyatt Williams.”21

Los Angeles Organbuilders

At the turn of the century the market for the King of Instruments on the West Coast was vibrant and growing rapidly, built upon the tidal wave of immigration and the rapid pace of church construction in the emerging metropolitan landscapes. Moreover, the spirit of enterprise was everywhere, marked by numerous “self-made” men eager to apply their talents and fortunes to railroad building, telegraph, mercantile trade, real estate development—and organbuilding. Local businessmen and their funding initially played a pivotal role in the succession of organbuilder nameplates in Los Angeles, as they did in establishing the industry elsewhere, for example, in Erie, Pennsylvania.22 But these “outsiders” invested with virtually no inkling of the inherently high-risk business of building pipe organs. Cost estimating, pricing, competition, and, especially, critical problems of cash flow vexed most builders and overwhelmed others.23 As Stanley explained: “You had to watch your pennies very closely to have a couple left when you finished an organ.”24 For a while the euphoric atmosphere of large buildings, talented employees, and fine, heavily publicized instruments masked these fundamental concerns. But before long financial realities took over.

Murray M. Harris

Organbuilding in Los Angeles began in 1895 when Fletcher & Harris built a two-manual instrument for the Church of the Ascension, Episcopal, in Sierra Madre.25 Murray M. Harris (1866–1922), a skilled voicer who had apprenticed with Hutchings in Boston, continued on his own. In 1900 he recruited a cadre of skilled artisans led by William Boone Fleming (1849–1940) who became superintendent. Harris acquired a spacious factory building and prospered by building instruments for the local market.26 In July 1900, the firm was incorporated as the Murray M. Harris Organ Company and capitalized at $100,000.27 In 1903 Harris contracted to build a 140-stop Audsley-designed instrument for the St. Louis Exposition. It was to be voiced, at Audsley’s request, by John W. Whitely, a well-known English voicer, described as “one of the pioneer spirits in the Birkenhead shops of Mr. Hope-Jones.”28 The St. Louis organ was something of a watershed in American organbuilding history. As David Lennox Smith commented: “The influence of the St. Louis organ could soon be seen in the String Organ divisions, multiple enclosures, and other new features that were included with growing frequency in specifications for large new organs.”29

Soon financial problems began that would continue to plague Harris. Working capital proved inadequate to finish the mammoth St. Louis instrument. In August 1903, the Los Angeles Times reported that shareholders, including Harris, his wife Helen, and others, were delinquent in court-ordered assessments of $10 per share on their stock. The problem resulted when only 352 shares, par value $100 per share, were actually subscribed, and thus of the authorized capitalization of $100,000, only $35,200 was paid-in and perhaps even less. The court stipulated that the additional stock be auctioned off at the company offices to acquire the funds necessary to keep operating.30

Enter Eben Smith, an archetypical entrepreneur who was described in the press as a “mining man” and “Colorado banker.” He had made a fortune in Colorado silver mines and was president of the Pacific Wireless Telephone Company.31 Smith purchased 500 shares of Harris stock, thereby acquiring a controlling interest in the business. He renamed it the Los Angeles Art Organ Company.32 In 1905 a patent infringement lawsuit threatened the company with liquidation, whereupon key employees, led by Fleming, moved east for a brief sojourn in Hoboken, New Jersey, under the name of Electrolian Organ Company.33 By September 1907, the employees, minus Fleming (who moved to Philadelphia where he was subsequently employed to superintend the installation of the St. Louis Exposition organ in the Wanamaker store), were back in Los Angeles, having joined the reorganized Murray M. Harris Organ Company.34 The head voicer was now Charles W. McQuigg, a protegé of John W. Whitely, who had remained in Los Angeles and served briefly as the Pacific Coast representative of the Barckhoff Church Organ Company of Pomeroy, Ohio.35

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and First Church of Christ, Scientist

The 1911 instrument Stanley Williams was called to voice and finish reflected the manifold changes in stoplist design and voicing taking place in the industry. With Harris’s training at Hutchings and acquaintance with other work in the east, it was not surprising that his early stoplists closely paralleled the work of these builders.36 The 1901 Murray Harris at Stanford University is a good example. As described by Manuel Rosales, who restored this instrument in 1986, the Stanford Harris was a typical 19th-century instrument featuring a well-developed principal chorus on the Great, a secondary chorus on the Swell, and a small Choir organ with not a full chorus but other colors. The voicing, on three to four inches wind pressure, was gentle and clear. Flutes were not exaggerated, i.e., no tibia tone, strings were precise and clear, and pedal stops were well balanced with the manuals. In contrast, the St. Paul’s specification (see stoplist, page 24) was confined to an ensemble of unison and octave voices at 16¢, 8¢, and 4¢ pitches, with emphasis on the 8¢ voice, representing the trend of the day. Diapason scales were much larger, and string scales much smaller than in earlier instruments.37 This characteristic most likely reflected the influence of John Whitely, the voicer who was closely associated with Audsley and who joined Harris in 1903, as well as Charles McQuigg, said to have “absorbed much of Whitely’s technic and ideal.”38

The first organ where Stanley’s design influence is found is the 1912 instrument for the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Los Angeles (see stoplist). Having also felt the impress of Whitely in England, he substituted a Tibia Clausa, a Hope-Jones stop, for the customary Gross Flute on the Great.39 But as Rosales points out, the absence of a tremolo on this division indicates this voice was viewed as filling out the ensemble, in contrast to a solo voice as found in a theatre organ. This organ contained a Dolce Cornet on the Swell and a 22?3' and 2' on the Great in what might be termed a vestigial chorus, but in no way could it be considered a well-developed Great chorus, which by this time had largely disappeared from American stoplists. What emerges is an accompanimental instrument in which the high-pressure Tuba, dominating the ensemble or playing solo against it, is symbolic of the trend.40

Tonal Philosophy, 1913

Williams’ expertise in voicing and finishing was soon recognized. In February 1913, he was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.41 His comments reflected his knowledge of English organbuilding, his background with Hope-Jones, and focused on the character and content of foundation tone. True diapason tone must predominate, he asserted. Subject to broad limits, it is bounded by string tone at one end of the spectrum and flute tone at the other. Old diapasons were “mellow and sweet,” a cantabile sound suited to today’s Choir organ. He faulted “Old Masters” for failing to preserve the character and power of voicing throughout the entire compass, which he attributed to imperfect scaling. The prevalence of upperwork and the introduction of “harsh” reeds, in the middle of the 19th century, overbalanced diapason tone, Williams said, leading cynics to refer to the “sausage frying” sound of a full Swell. To remedy this result, diapasons were increased in scale and number. Hard, stringy and nasal, they were brilliant in a way that favored upper partials, sacrificing fundamental tone and thereby blending well with mutations and reeds. Then the pendulum swung back to the other extreme and high-cut mouths produced a flabby tone devoid of the necessary partials and bordering on the fluty.'
He outlined the foundations of a three-manual organ, reflecting the Hope-Jones influence and the tastes of the time. On the Great manual the first diapason should be large scale and with a leathered lip; the second diapason, of medium scale, not leathered, but not in any way stringy. The third should be a “mild and sweet” voice, and quite soft, much like the work of Father Bernard Smith. On the Swell, a Hope-Jones phonon-type should be the first diapason, large scale and leather-lipped, necessary to balance the Swell reeds. The second should be a violin or horn diapason. For the choir organ, a mild geigen or gemshorn was the preferred voice. He cautioned that every stop in a well-voiced organ must have its “individuality,” and lamented builder fads, which he found detrimental to the advancement of the instrument. He challenged organists and organbuilders to work together to uphold the dignity of the instrument and its music to insure its high place in the church service. Williams’ comments offer an interesting contrast to today’s perspective and were superseded in his own thinking as reflected in his work with Kimball and Skinner.

Murray M. Harris, continued

In 1912, a year after Williams joined the Harris firm, financial problems reappeared. Murray Harris sold his interest to a retired mining man from Mexico named Heuer, who soon became disillusioned with the meager (if any) profits in organbuilding, and sold out.42 In August 1913, control of the company passed to E. S. Johnston, former manager of the Eilers Music Company in Los Angeles, who in November that year advertised the Johnston Organ and Piano Manufacturing Company as successor to the Murray M. Harris Co.43 Johnston and real estate developer Suburban Homes then agreed to build a 75,000 square foot factory in Van Nuys, which opened in November 1913. Soon, however, working capital was again exhausted. Johnston and his partner Bell journeyed east in search of funds but apparently returned empty-handed.44 Then Suburban Homes of Van Nuys, having turned down Johnston’s plea for financial backing, were the new owners by default. They renamed the business California Organ Company and promptly palmed it off to the Title Insurance and Trust Company of Los Angeles, holders of the mortgage on the factory building.45

Robert-Morton Organ Company

At this time a sea change was taking place in the whole concept of pipe organs and in the industry that built them. The theatre market, with its radically different instrument, was growing rapidly, having displaced the higher-cost pit orchestra. Equipped with tibias, kinuras and other voices as well as traps and toy counters, these instruments were ideally suited for accompanying silent movies. The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, whose name would soon become the generic term for the theatre pipe organ, was already enjoying a nationwide business. Within less than ten years, organbuilding in America would be virtually divided into two separate industries, with Wurlitzer, Robert-Morton, Barton, Link, Marr & Colton, Page, and Geneva identified almost exclusively with the theatre paradigm. Other builders, although they built theatre organs, were primarily identified with the church instrument and market.
The California Organ Company was at a crossroads. Would they continue in the church organ industry, now well established nationwide and well represented on the West Coast? Or would they recognize and capitalize on the growing theatre organ market? The resources were in place in Van Nuys: a well-appointed modern factory, skilled artisans, and a talented, experienced senior management, which together had guaranteed the succession of nameplates. As the late Tom B’hend, whose research chronicles much of the history of this era, observed: “The Wurlitzer Hope-Jones instruments were gaining popularity; the unit principle was being accepted without reserve by up and coming theatre organists . . . If the California Organ Company were to enter the theatre field, it would be necessary to produce a unit instrument of comparable quality.”46 With his rich background as an apprentice of Hope-Jones, who could be better qualified to design and build such an instrument than Stanley Williams? As Williams later reflected: “I was the one man on the West Coast who could put this sort of instrument into production.”47

Enter the American Photo Player Company of Berkeley, California. In 1912 this firm produced a small tubular-pneumatic pit instrument combining a few ranks of flue pipes and perhaps a reed stop with a piano. Booming sales and nationwide distribution alerted them to the tremendous potential for a unit theatre organ.48 Negotiations beginning in the spring of 1916 led to the merger of the California Organ and American Photo Player companies and on May 2, 1917, the Robert-Morton Organ Company was duly incorporated.49 As the late David Junchen, noted theatre organ biographer, commented: “Werner (Harry J. Werner, Photo Player promoter) had found just the ticket for expanding his theatre sales, and the owners of the California Organ Co. had found a buyer for the albatross they didn’t want anyway.”50 Stanley Williams was named plant superintendent and the following year vice president. Opus 1, a two-manual organ designed by Williams, was built for the California Theatre in Santa Barbara.51 As B’hend noted: “The men and women who built pipe organs in Southern California never left their work benches to take up fabrication of the Robert-Morton pipe organ.”52

The new company increasingly focused on the theatre instrument, but initially it continued to service a spectrum of the local market, including churches. In 1917 Morton built a $10,000 instrument for the A. Hamburger and Sons Department Store in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times noted that it was the first organ of its kind on the Pacific Coast, and was acquired “for the purpose of giving the people a musical education and making shopping more pleasant.”53 In 1920 Williams sold and most likely designed a 72-rank, six-division, four-manual organ for Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.54 Edward Hopkins lauded Williams’ “English training, practical experience at the voicing machine, and open-minded progressiveness,” saying the Bovard organ “stands pre-eminent.”55 This instrument featured Morton’s horseshoe console (Morton didn’t build drawknob consoles) and concrete swell boxes enclosing the entire instrument.

W. W. Kimball Company

Williams, a realist in business matters, recognized that Morton made the right choice in electing to build theatre pipe organs. Yet his heart was with the classic church organ, and the Bovard instrument no doubt reinforced his convictions. As his daughter reflected: “He didn’t like traps and toy counters.”56 He resigned from Morton in early 1922, and was feted by employees at a Saturday afternoon gathering at the shop in recognition of his eleven years service to Morton and its predecessors.57 Momentarily, he elected to go out on his own. He and his wife Isabel, together with Carl B. Sartwell, his colleague at Morton, formed Stanley W. Williams, Incorporated and built perhaps one or two instruments, his daughter believes; the details are unknown.58 But the odds were against them. By this time what local capital had been available was already committed to the theatre organ business, and nationally known church organ builders were well represented on the West Coast. Stanley soon wisely recognized that with his interests, his next opportunity lay with an established (i.e., well-capitalized) church organ builder.

Williams then began a five-year sojourn with the W. W. Kimball Company of Chicago as their West Coast representative.59 His decision was no doubt influenced by his former colleague in Van Nuys, Robert P. Elliot, with whom he shared many details in a common philosophy of organbuilding. The much-traveled Elliot, who joined California Organ as vice president and general manager in October 1916, left in May 1918 to become head of the organ department at Kimball in Chicago.60 A dynamic and aggressive firm, Kimball was ever alert to market opportunities, and recognized that their name, well-established in pianos and reed organs, carried over into the market for pipe organs. A large newspaper advertisement by the Eilers Music House in Los Angeles, in April 1912, promoting the Kimball Player Piano, mentioned Kimball as “America’s Greatest Pipe Organ Builders.”61

During this period the Kimball company was making far-reaching changes in the mechanical and tonal character of their instrument, attributed primarily to the influence of Elliot and George Michel, the latter widely acclaimed for his superb reed and string voicing. As Junchen noted: “If George Michel was the voice of the Kimball organ, R. P. Elliot was its soul.”62 Improvements in Kimball engineering and action design, coupled with elegant workmanship, were marked by abandonment of two-pressure bellows and two-pressure ventil windchests with hinged pouches in favor of a pitman-action windchest with springs under the pouches. Tonally, Kimball moved away from the liturgical motif in church organ design toward a pronounced symphonic and orchestral paradigm, a new direction for American organbuilders.63

In Los Angeles

Stanley Williams opened his Kimball office in the downtown emporium of the Sherman-Clay Music Company. “For half a century, Sherman, Clay & Co. has been the philosopher and friend of good music on the Pacific Coast,” they advertised.64 When churches went looking for a pipe organ, they logically began with a music retailer. The connection between music retailers and organ sales was a salient but long-overlooked feature of marketing the instrument during this time. As early as 1902, Harris was represented by Kohler & Chase in San Francisco and then independently by Robert Fletcher Tilton, a well-known musician with an office in the Kohler & Chase building.65 In Los Angeles, the Aeolian Company was represented by the George J. Birkel Music Company, and Welte-Mignon by the Barker Brothers department store. Showrooms soon appeared. By 1926 Wurlitzer, Robert-Morton, and Link all maintained showrooms in Los Angeles.66

Williams’ work with Kimball began immediately, as did the maintenance business he established. He installed, finished, and perhaps sold the 23-rank, three-manual Kimball organ in the world-famous Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, an early megachurch seating 5,300 (see stoplist, page 27). This church, dedicated on New Year’s Day 1923, was built by the flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the International Church of the Four Square Gospel.67 It is a colorful instrument now undergoing restoration in what was once a wonderful acoustic, ideally suited to the worship style and tastes of the founder and the congregation. In what must have been the pinnacle of unification and duplexing, 23 ranks of pipes were spread over 61 speaking stops. Each rank was playable at three or more pitches and duplexed to two or more manuals. Synthetic stops included a saxophone and orchestral oboe. Couplers greatly increased the power and versatility of the instrument. The Orchestral division is in the same chamber as the Great, sharing voices and thereby giving the illusion of a larger organ as does the number of stop tabs on the console.68

Other Kimball sales by Williams in Los Angeles churches included organs in Hollywood Presbyterian, St. James Episcopal, Precious Blood Roman Catholic, and Rosewood Methodist churches.69 He also supervised the re-installation of the 1911 Murray Harris instrument in St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in the new edifice in 1924, replacing the original console with one built by Kimball.70 The largest Kimball organ he sold, in 1926, was a 56-rank, 65-stop, four-manual for the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles (see stoplist).71 The West Coast correspondent of The Diapason, Roland Diggle, described it as having “lovely solo voices and a stunning ensemble.”72

Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner

In 1927 Stanley Williams made his last move, the capstone of his illustrious career, joining Ernest M. Skinner of Boston as Pacific Coast representative.73 He welcomed the opportunity to affiliate with America’s foremost builder of this era, and Skinner in turn was pleased that a man of such knowledge and reputation would now add luster to his prestigious firm. This association was celebrated with a dinner for the local organ fraternity at a fashionable downtown restaurant.74 In July 1928, Williams installed a two-manual, ten-rank, duplexed and unified Skinner instrument, Opus 690, in his home. An enclosed instrument representative of small residence organs built by the Boston patriarch, it comprised a diapason, unit flute, flute and celeste, string and celeste, and four reeds: vox humana, clarinet, French horn, and an English horn—the latter two Skinner favorites.75 Sales of two-, three-, and four-manual instruments began immediately: a four-manual for Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, in 1927, Opus 676, and in 1930 a 78-rank, four-manual organ for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Opus 818, designed by Harold Gleason in consultation with Lynwood Farnam and G. Donald Harrison (see photo above).76 The same year another four-manual organ was built for Temple Methodist Church in San Francisco, Opus 819.77 Sales in 1931 included a four-manual organ for First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, Opus 856, and the following year a four-manual for the residence of prominent Pasadena pediatrician Dr. Raymond B. Mixsell, Opus 893. Organizer of the Bach Festival in Pasadena, Dr. Mixsell engaged Marcel Dupré to play the inaugural recital on his instrument.78 Williams’ extensive service business, established when he began working for Kimball in 1922, carried him through World War II, when organ companies could no longer build new instruments. After the war, heavy sales resumed.

Tonal Philosophy, 1959

In 1959 Stanley was asked to appraise and recommend updates for the 1926 Kimball organ at the First Baptist Church in Los Angeles, an instrument he had sold and installed.79 The document he prepared sheds light on the evolution of Williams’ tonal philosophy and offers key insights into the prevailing orthodoxy of the 1920s, especially the practices of the Kimball Company, a long-neglected major builder. He asserted that during the 1920s, the entire organbuilding industry in the United States was “to some degree” influenced by the theatre pipe organ. Williams lamented this trend, which saw higher wind pressures and voicing of flutes, diapasons, strings, and reeds that tended to isolate and magnify their differences. He acknowledged the positive contribution of the theatre epoch in “better engineering practice and the speed and reliability of action.”

Williams called for major tonal revisions to make the instrument more suitable for worship services, choir accompaniment, and interpretation of the instrument’s great literature. These revisions included replacing all flue pipes in the Great division except the Gemshorn and the Melodia, substituting a Quintadena for the 16¢ Double Open Diapason, and eliminating the Tromba (see stoplists, pages 27 and above). On the Swell manual the many new ranks recommended included a “small scale bright tone trumpet” in place of the Cornopean, and on the Choir new mutations and a Krummhorn. He recommended revoicing the Gamba and Celeste on the Solo division for a “broader and softer” sound. In 1965 this instrument was enla

R. E. Coleberd, an economist and retired petroleum industry executive, is a contributing editor of The Diapason. He is a director of The Reuter Organ Company.

Introduction

In the following narrative, the interaction of an organist and an organbuilder in the design of a new instrument and selection of a builder is described in some detail by each of them. The organist, Jerome Meachen, an Oberlin and Union graduate, was organist/choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1957 St. John’s, upon the recommendation of Meachen, acquired a 70-rank, three-manual McManis organ. It was followed, when he changed positions, by a 67-rank, three-manual at Redeemer Episcopal Church in Sarasota, Florida (completed in 1966), and in 1973, by a 49-rank, three-manual for Manatee Community College, Bradenton, Florida. The builder, Charles McManis, a trained organist who had apprenticed briefly with Walter Holtkamp before World War II, operated a small shop in Kansas City, Kansas. His skill in flue voicing would become widely recognized and acclaimed in a sixty-year career, which counted more than 125 new instruments and rebuilds.

The discussion highlights the steps in the evolution of their tonal philosophy. It was a process of listening, comparing and choosing sounds and stops in the quest for authenticity in the revolutionary epoch that characterized American organbuilding in the decades following World War II. Before their first meeting, Meachen had acquired a preference for non-legato playing while McManis had been taught the legato style. Despite this difference, the two men found common ground in their admiration and profound respect for the tonal work of William A. Johnson, a legendary nineteenth-century New England tracker builder, and his successors.

Background

The choice of a relatively unknown independent builder in 1956 was decidedly the exception for this era. In the 1950s, pipe organ building in America was the province of the integrated major builders who had controlled the market for new instruments since the turn of the century. M. P. Möller of Hagerstown, Maryland, the “General Motors” of the industry, with a force of more than 400 workers, delivered 365 instruments in 1928 and in the decade 1950-60, with perhaps 200 employees, built 125 organs per year.1 Other builders, those who had survived the drastic shakeout during the Great Depression of the 1930s, were likewise busy, with comparatively large work forces and lengthy backlogs.

In retrospect we might safely say the 1950s, though a vibrant decade, marked the beginning of the end of what could be termed the “commercial” era of organbuilding in America that extended back to the 1920s and perhaps even earlier. Builders, including such highly successful businessmen as Mathias Peter Möller, concentrated almost exclusively on production to meet the enormous market demand in all venues. Company executives, sons of the founder, not musicians, were largely unfamiliar with the great literature for the organ. Sadly, they scarcely comprehended the interface between Bach, Buxtehude and other composers and the subtleties and nuances of fine voicing and finishing in building the King of Instruments. Their instruments were often quite successful in the context of a “production organ,” with uniform and consistent voicing, thanks to the skills of talented shop voicers, but, in retrospect, they were perhaps lacking in artistic statement, which can come only from meticulous tonal finishing. On small organs there was virtually no concept of tonal finishing once the instrument was installed and tuned. Only with the large “signature” instruments was time scheduled for tonal finishing, for example by John Schleigh of Möller and Herb Pratt of Aeolian-Skinner.2

Yet the organ reform movement was underway and gaining momentum, beginning with the pathfinding efforts in the 1930s of E. Power Biggs, Melville Smith, King Covell and others. The major themes are well known: lower wind pressures, smaller scales and higher pitches in flue work and the introduction of chorus in place of solo reeds. A “vertical” tonal palette emerged, featuring a full range of pitches in place of the former “horizontal” palette, dominated by stops of 8-foot pitch. These elements combined in the cohesive blending of individual voices, and the emphasis on ensemble in the building of primary and secondary choruses as reflected in the work of Walter Holtkamp and G. Donald Harrison in the North German and American Classic paradigms.

Leaders in the organist profession, highly educated, widely traveled and well-read, people like Robert Noehren and Parvin Titus, were captivated by the new sounds and ensembles which awakened them to the instrument’s rich music from antiquity. They began paying close attention to European instruments, through travel and recordings, as well as 19th-century work of notable American builders (Hook, Erben, Johnson and others). They wisely looked beyond the stoplist and listened carefully to the sound. The reintroduction of the tracker instrument, first by European builders, followed by an emerging U.S. industry of small shops, reinforced the historic and intrinsic artistic value of the King of Instruments. Steady improvement in the tone quality of the electronic instruments soon spelled the end of the commodity segment of the pipe organ market rooted in the image of an organ as a utilitarian device in support of corporate worship.3

By the end of the century it was recognized that the heart and soul of a pipe organ, a work of art, is the tonal edifice, which begins with a vision and continues through design, voicing and tonal finishing of the instrument. These requirements were most often found in the combined talents of the tonal architect and skilled, dedicated artisans in his shop, seldom in one individual. Harrison, Holtkamp and Fisk, for example, were superb designers but were not voicers. Schopp, Pearson and Zajic were supremely talented reed voicers. But once in a while one individual comprised them all. George Michel of Kimball perhaps came close and, in the author’s judgment, Charles McManis fits this image.

In any revolutionary epoch, change in an established industry comes slowly and sometimes from the outside. American organbuilders, badly shaken by the lean years of the Great Depression and World War II, were to some degree insular, isolated and ingrown. On balance they were reluctant to abandon existing practices and slow to adopt new and untried techniques with unknown consequences. Voicers, trained in-house on high-pressure, wide-scale stops of 8-foot pitch, scarcely comprehended the new generation of flues and reeds. They and their superiors had been disinterested in historic instruments, American and European, which they viewed as antiquated and obsolete. But they could not ignore the revolutionary changes around them, and some firms wisely brought in outsiders--men like Richard Piper at Austin and Franklin Mitchell at Reuter--who were listening and eager to apply their ideas to new stoplists.

At the close of World War II, the demand for organ work far exceeded the supply of qualified people. Factories enjoyed lengthy backlogs and were hard pressed to meet production schedules. Service firms comprised primarily older men, former employees of firms who had failed in the Great Depression--for example, Syl Kohler in Louisville (Pilcher) and Ben Sperbeck and Milton Stannke in Rock Island (Bennett). Honest and hard working, they can best be described as mechanics; few had either voicing experience or any concept of a modern chorus or ensemble. This afforded an opportunity for a newcomer, a young man who had listened carefully, had a firm conviction of what pipe sound should be, and had acquired the voicing skills to bring the sound of a pipe to the tone quality he desired.

Jerome Meachen writes:

A native of Oklahoma City, I studied organ with Dana Lewis Griffin, a student of David McK. Williams at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City, and then enrolled at Oberlin College where my teachers were Leo Holden and Grigg Fountain. Holden was a 19th-century organ teacher--Rheinberger, romantic, and very happy with the E. M. Skinner organ in the chapel. His whole approach to organ playing was: “write down the fingering I give you and the registration I want you to use.” It was a very dry--and I felt antiquated--approach. In contrast, Fountain said: “select your own registration from what you hear, we will discuss it and you defend it.” This was essential to broadening my understanding of organ music and what I wanted to develop in my own touch on the instrument. While at Oberlin I practiced on the Johnson organ at Christ Episcopal Church in Oberlin courtesy of Arnold Blackburn, also on the Oberlin organ faculty. This awakened me to the beautiful voicing of this builder. Of course northeast Ohio was Holtkamp country. When I began studying with Fountain, my last two years, he had just obtained a Holtkamp at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Cleveland. While I was fascinated with the sounds of this instrument, I found it ear-shattering. I well remember one Saturday afternoon when I was practicing at St. Paul’s. Walter Holtkamp came in, climbed up on the Swell box and said play full organ. He just reveled in the volume, but I found that sort of sound excruciating.

A milestone in my career was a recital at Oberlin by Ernest White. I was fascinated by his approach, non-legato, in contrast to legato, which was the basic style at Oberlin. Legato evolved because of the acoustics organists had to deal with in American churches. Nothing happened after you took your finger off the note so you had to pull everything together.

After graduating from Oberlin I enrolled in the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where I arranged to study with Ernest White, then an adjunct faculty member. We shared a common interest in repertoire and liturgy. White had me listen to orchestral recordings of Mozart and commented: remember, “Bach was a violinist as well as an organist.” Bob Clark, another graduate student, and I found White way ahead of his time in non-legato sound, which broadens your understanding of the organ. This is the sound one finds in Europe and what we were striving for in America. Working with White was working with the literature and developing the capacity to do his particular style of non-legato in terms of liturgy, the Anglican approach and plainsong. This was very enlightening to me. I was fascinated by White’s approach to playing the studio organ at St. Mary the Virgin, the second studio instrument, this one by Möller. His technique was a detached sound, like the ringing of bells. Unfortunately, the voicing was so loud it was difficult to listen to. This alerted me to the distinction between intensity and decibels, a key distinction in my thinking. I was also intrigued by the design of the organ, which had a 32’ Cornet using individual stops and two Swell boxes providing two ensembles. This inspired the use of separate swell boxes and couplers for flues and reeds at St. John’s. My admiration for Johnson continued when I practiced on their instrument at the Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church in the Bronx while at Union.4

Charles McManis writes:

As a pre-teenager in Kansas City in the 1920s, with my parents I often rode the streetcar to Independence Boulevard Christian Church to hear Sunday afternoon recitals by the legendary Hans Feil on the four-manual, 1910 Austin organ. In the 1930s while I was a student at the University of Kansas, I spent summers and holidays working with Peter E. Nielsen, a local serviceman, tuning and rebuilding pipe organs. Two of these instruments were Johnson trackers from the 1880s.5 They were especially impressive and were to influence fundamentally my concept of voicing.

Enrolling as a liberal arts major at the University of Kansas in Lawrence I became a student of University Organist Laurel Everette Anderson, an Oberlin master’s graduate who then studied for three years in Paris with Joseph Bonnet. He taught the legato method, and emphasized proper turning of phrases and making real music out of notes. He greatly expanded my knowledge of the pipe organ and emphasized nuances of color and singing quality in organ voices. Following graduation with an A.B. degree in 1936 and having already set my sights on becoming an organbuilder, I obtained a Mus.B. at KU in 1937, which required my playing an hour-long recital from memory. The thought occurred to me that I might be the first organbuilder who could play more than “Yankee Doodle” on what he had built.

I began my organbuilding career with a shop in the basement of my parents’ home. I rebuilt three organs and built one new instrument. My Opus 2, 1939--electrifying and adding nine ranks to a 1910 tubular-pneumatic Kilgen--is still playing in the Central Christian Church in Kansas City, Kansas. Then, having learned of his growing prominence in the organ reform movement, I apprenticed with Walter Holtkamp in Cleveland for a few months, eager to learn from him. I assisted with the installation of a three-manual Holtkamp organ at Olivet College in Michigan. It had Great and Positiv slider chests, but the Swell had ventil stop-action for want of sufficient space for a slider chest. When I compared the sounds of slider chest pipes and those on the ventil chest I was surprised to find that I could hear no difference. Walter’s instruments were visually well designed and beautiful to look at but, frankly, I was disappointed with his ensemble sound and tone quality. The voicing lacked a certain richness of tone. In checking Holtkamp pipes I noticed that he nicked only on the languids and not on the lower lips. As a result, pipes occasionally tended to emit an abnormal squeaking sound. He was not interested in building a truly classic organ as much as building a distinctive Holtkamp organ. In retrospect I find that I employed very few of Holtkamp’s ideas in my later work. Based on my background in music, I wasn’t hearing in his organs the sounds I wished to hear in my own instruments.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry in World War II, I enlisted in the Army. Prior to shipment overseas my outfit was stationed at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for a few days. I went on pass to New York City to hear G. Donald Harrison’s new Aeolian-Skinner in the main sanctuary of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. This was my first acquaintance with mixtures and upperwork, which Laurel Anderson had talked about at KU, but which were conspicuously absent in the Austin organ in Hoch Auditorium there. Then, as a chaplain’s assistant, I was stationed in Europe where I took every opportunity to play and inspect European instruments. I remember, in particular, the famous Cavaillé-Coll instrument in the church of St. Ouen at Rouen, which inspired Guilmant’s Eighth Organ Symphony. This was the first time I had seen a five-rank mounted cornet and reeds with sunken blocks in the boots.6 After the war I returned to Kansas City, Kansas and set up shop again. On one occasion, being in New York City, I attended a recital given by Ernest White on his new Möller studio organ at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. I left at intermission because the organ was painfully loud. In my voicing I try to make a rank of pipes only as loud as needed to ping the tone off the walls, blowing only hard enough to fill the room at the desired volume.7

Jerome: Following graduation from Union, I was appointed organist/choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. When we went looking for a new instrument to replace the 1869 Hook & Hastings, I wasn’t enamored with the sounds of Holtkamp, Möller, Schlicker and Austin, and mentioned my dilemma to my good friend Bob Clark, whose judgment I valued. He was organist at the Peddie Memorial Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, where my wife was soloist, having the best-paying solo position in the area, while I was at Union. He said, “Why don’t you check with Charles McManis, who builds organs that sing and don’t shout.” When I learned he was in Danbury, Connecticut, I went down to get acquainted, and we hit it off immediately.

Charles: In the early 1950s I became acquainted with Robert Noehren through our writings in The Diapason and The American Organist magazines. I worked for him on the Hill Auditorium Skinner in Ann Arbor, and built a new organ for Frankenmuth, Michigan, where he was the consultant. When he was named consultant on the Johnson at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Danbury, Connecticut, whose organist had been his student at Michigan, I was called in. My strong feelings concerning Johnson flue pipe voicing began during my apprenticeship days in Kansas City. I discovered that diapason pipes mouth-blown very gently, then increased to full volume, had scarcely any change in pitch. Volume was regulated at the toe hole, not by opening the flue. In contrast, classical open toe voicing regulated volume at the mouth, which I found totally inadequate. I revoiced the 8-foot Principal, increasing its richness of tone, primarily by opening the toes and, to a lesser degree adjusting the mouths. Jerry and I connected as musicians, no doubt in part because I too had a degree in organ. We both agreed on what we didn’t like. I obtained the contract for the St. John’s, Waterbury, organ (see photo and stoplist) in part because Parvin Titus was the consultant. The St. John’s rector, Rev. John Youngblood, had been a curate in Cincinnati, knew Mr. Titus and trusted his judgment. Also, I had built the new instrument for the Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Dayton, where Titus also had been the consultant.

Jerome: The Johnson sound was already in my head, not only from Oberlin, but from the fine Johnson in Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church in the Bronx, where I first practiced when I went to New York. I explained that we were looking for intensity not decibels in organ sound, colors and ensembles that sing. Charles showed me what he was doing. It was soon obvious this was just the ticket for us. These initial impressions were confirmed when my wife and I visited St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Kansas, and heard for the first time a complete McManis instrument. All the voices were exquisite; the 8-foot principal was a well-supported, big baritone sound. Having worked in training choirs at an early age, striving to blend individual voices, I found in the lovely individual voices of this organ an exquisite ensemble and chorus.

Charles: When Jerry came to Kansas City, the mixtures and ensemble sounds on the Great and Swell at St. Paul’s were what really got to him. The voices together on each manual resulted in contrasting sounds but very much related. We talked at length about voicing and drew up a specification for a three-manual instrument for St. John’s. (See specification.) I also discussed what I had done in reworking old pipes and changing pitch. This was very important because in the 1869 Hook & Hastings at St. John’s a number of old ranks were reworked.

I first saw Waterbury after Meachen returned from Kansas City, and was dismayed to find dry acoustics and such terribly large scales in the Hook & Hastings. The only principal stop I could use was the 16-foot on the Great, which would work well in the Pedal division. We were able to cut down and revoice a number of 8-foot stops; for example, the 4-foot principal on the Swell had been an 8-foot violin diapason. If the scale and mouth treatment were correct, the desired sound would follow.

Let me quote from my forthcoming autobiography to explain the tonal philosophy of this instrument: “The classic Werkprinzip theory of terraced manual pitches had not yet hit the AGO cocktail hour conversation when Jerry and I drew up the design for Opus 35 (St. John’s Church Waterbury, CT) on that Sunday afternoon. Submitted to organ consultant Parvin Titus, he heartily approved of the design, but suggested inclusion of the rather outstanding Oboe from the 1869 H&H. But back to the Werkprinzip! While numerous other stops are needed in each division, the backbone is the Principal chorus, as shown below:

I:              Great     8’ Principal       11/3’      Mixture

II:            Swell    4’ Principal        2/3’       Scharf

III:          Brustwerk           2’ Principal        1/3’       Cymbel

Pedal     8’ Principal       11/3’     Mixture

For purposes of contrapuntal clarity, the Pedal chorus should be the same pitch as the Great, plus suitable 16’ underpinning. Polyphony does better without the growl of a sub-octave mixture cluster.”

After the tornado hit downtown Waterbury in July, 1989, heavily damaging the St. John’s organ, I replaced 35 ranks of pipes including replacement of the Brustwerk Singend Regal with a brass Krummhorn and substitution of a Swell 4’ Clarion for the earlier 4’ Krummhorn. Also, the 32’ extension of the Pedal reed was linked to the Posaune instead of the Contrafagotto.

Jerome: Another factor which impressed me about the McManis was its compatibility with what I call a theatre sound by which I mean, it had to dance. In the theatre organ you had a detached pedal and a strong emphasis on the melodic line when you are thinking bass line and melody. This is why I was very comfortable doing figured bases. It was non-legato; it was instrumental. When you were featuring the posthorn, you were quite willing to detach it. My father loved theatre organ, so from the time I started playing, I developed something of a theatre style. Searle Wright, the well-known organist at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, also did a great theatre style.

Charles inspired my definition of intensity because he viewed the entire instrument as a whole. In a three-manual you could draw the principal and mixture on each division, couple them together and you had a basic ensemble evoking a very intense, rich but not very loud sound because you didn’t have to fill in and thus did not have an awful lot of stops working. Thus the concept of full organ was very discriminating; the full organ piston didn’t bring on everything. You are dealing with colors and when you put everything on you end up with brown or gray. And with a tremolo on each division if you wanted to cantus firmus you could do it anywhere in the instrument.

This instrument fulfills my belief in the theological aspect of an organ. With my developing interest in liturgy I was very much aware of the person in the pew. I hold that the organ must be people-friendly, in support of congregational singing whether it be chant or hymnody. Surrounding rather than hitting the congregation with sound--making a joyful noise, not just a noise. Charles spoke of attending a recital on the Möller practice organ at St. Mary the Virgin in New York and finding it so loud he left after the first half of the program. I agree. White offered me a chance to practice on that organ but I told him I would be using only one or two stops so I might as well practice on the chapel organ. The sound was so high in decibels I couldn’t hear it.

Redeemer and Manatee

This paper has focused on the St. John’s organ. Those at Redeemer Episcopal Church and Manatee Community College continued the fundamental practices in the philosophy of McManis and Meachen. They also reflected modifications and forward thinking in their approach, as did the rebuilding and restoration of St. John’s in 1989.

At Redeemer in Florida, the former ten-rank Möller, with its subsequent addition of nineteen Aeolian-Skinner ranks, was skillfully integrated into the 67-rank new instrument. In place of the 16’ Quintaton on the Great, they chose a 16’ Gemshorn mounted on the chancel wall, extended to an 8’ Gemshorn and a 4’ tapered flute in a seamless tonal progression. The Great and Positiv exposed chests were equipped with toeboard expansion chambers to increase richness of tone.

The 49-rank Manatee Community College organ was installed in Neel Auditorium at the point of a pie-shaped building on a 35-foot shelf at the back of the stage. In an obviously “werkprinzip” layout (see photo, page 20), in a variety of shapes, it was enclosed in a mahogany case. The 16’ Pedal Principal exposed at the center hid the movement of Swell shutters behind. To its left were the lower notes of the 16’ Subbass and 16’ Posaune; to the right, the pipes of the Hooded Trumpet and more Subbass metal pipes. To the far left in the left façade was the Great 8’ Principal, and to the far right the 4’ Positiv Principal in the façade. Roofs of the façades differed but all were related to the focal point mentioned above.

The Manatee Great included a 16’ Gemshorn, all the usual 8’ and 4’ stops, plus a normal 11/3’ Mixture, a 2/3’ Acuta, and an 8’ Trumpet. The Swell mixture was a 1’ Scharf and the Positiv had a 1/3’ Cymbel. The thoroughly adequate Pedal division included a 32’ Dulzian and the usual 8’ and 4’ ranks. As would be expected, the Pedal mixture lowest pitch was 11/3’, but pipe scales were larger than those of the Great Mixture.

Summary

The above dialogue illustrates the way in which the concept of organ sound in the mind of an organist and soon-to-be builder begins with formal study of the instrument and is heavily influenced by the instructor and his experience. With this background, they are then prepared to compare and contrast a wide variety of sound in determining their own definition of it: for Meachen and McManis, a singing sound. It also argues that the ultimate test of the voicer’s art, be it Johnson or McManis, is the 8’ Diapason found on the Great, a belief shared by organists and builders for many years.

In an article in The Diapason, based upon his lecture to the AIO Convention in Pittsburgh in 1977, McManis explains the details of flue voicing and the practices of Tannenberg, Gratian, Kilgen, Hook & Hastings, Johnson, Wurlitzer, Estey (William E. Haskell), Cavaillé-Coll, and Kimball.8 This paper, now considered a classic, together with the recognition of his peers in his selection as instructor in flue voicing at a seminar of the American Institute of Organbuilders, established him, in the author’s judgment, as one of the finest flue voicers of the twentieth century.9

Charles passed away, at age 91, on December 3, 2004 in South Burlington, Vermont. Providentially, he and his wife Judith had just completed his autobiography. It contains vivid recollections of personalities and detailed descriptions of his instruments in a sixty-year career that spanned the arc of the postwar history of organbuilding in America. This priceless volume is scheduled to be published by the Organ Historical Society in 2005. It will find a prominent place on the shelf of every organist, organbuilder and organ enthusiast.

For research assistance and critical comments on drafts of this paper, the author gratefully acknowledges: Gene Bedient, Jerry Dawson, Charles Eames, Donald Gillette, Albert Neutel, Barbara Owen, Michael Quimby, Elizabeth Schmidt, Jack Sievert and R. E. Wagner.

David Engen holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Church Music, Magna cum Laude, from St. Olaf College (1971), Master of Arts in Organ Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa (1973), and Master of Science in Software Design and Development from the University of St. Thomas (1988). He is a Senior Manager in Sales and Marketing IT at Seagate Technology in Bloomington, Minnesota, and owns David Engen & Associates, Inc., maintainers of pipe organs in the Twin Cities area and western Wisconsin since 1983. He is a member of the Kimball Organ Steering Committee for the City of Minneapolis, contributes occasionally to various music journals, consults on organ design, and is webmaster for the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Guild of Organists ().

Introduction
W. W. Kimball of Chicago emerged in the 1920s and 1930s as a major builder of quality pipe organs, both “classic” and “theatre” in style. [See R. E. Coleberd, “Three Kimball Pipe Organs in Missouri,” The Diapason, September 2000.] In 1932, Minot Teachers College (now Minot State University, <www.minotstateu.edu>) in Minot, North Dakota, installed a 22-rank Kimball designed by William H. Barnes in the college auditorium. A recent restoration by the Reuter Organ Company of Lawrence, Kansas, has given the organ a second life, and for the first time in over a decade the public can again hear this organ. It now serves as a practice and teaching organ for a new generation of students.

Minot in the 1920s
In the 1880s and 1890s, Minot hosted many gambling houses and saloons. By the 1920s, the city had built new churches, a hospital, established the college as a degree-granting institution, and formed many cultural organizations. By 1928 Minot ranked as one of the most prosperous cities in the country, based on business volume. The Great Northern “Empire Builder” began its Seattle-to-Chicago route in 1929, passing through Minot, and the Soo Line began its “Mountaineer” service between Vancouver and Chicago.
Between 1920 and 1930, Minot’s population increased from 10,476 to 16,099. Music and cultural organizations flourished. As early as 1909, the community presented a December performance of Handel’s Messiah. The Teachers College, known first as the Normal School, offered a music curriculum in 1919. In 1921, the community started a Schumann Club and a 40-member community band. Students from the college performed Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado in 1925. In the summer of 1926 a 150-voice community chorus inspired creation of a permanent Minot Community Chorus, directed by the college’s music department chair. The 60-voice chorus first performed in January 1927. The college orchestra of 52 members first performed in 1929.
The Normal School opened in 1913. Dr. George A. McFarland became president in 1922 at the age of 64 and ran the school until his death in 1938 at the age of 80. By 1924 the Normal School had become Minot State Teachers College and offered a BA degree in education. Old Main had been expanded with a new west wing just before Dr. McFarland began his tenure. By 1925, Old Main had a new north wing housing an auditorium and a gymnasium. The auditorium would later house the Kimball organ and be named for Dr. McFarland.

Purchase
In such a fertile cultural environment, the college and the community of Minot came together to fund the organ project. A $5 gift by Mrs. Emma Cotton in 1925, earmarked specifically for an organ in the new building, started the fund drive. In 1926 the faculty pledged $1300, followed by pledges from students and college organizations, but the total fell far short of the contract amount. The college realized they alone could not fund the $12,500 needed for an acceptable instrument for the auditorium, so they extended the campaign to the business community. As a railroad town, Minot had grown quickly and the business community was active and strong. Pledges reached $10,000, still short of the goal. A final push by the business community a few years after the 1929 stock market crash allowed the college to sign a contract with Kimball at the beginning of 1932. Harry Iverson, well known for organ service and installation in Minneapolis, installed the Kimball in May of that year. Designer William H. Barnes of Evanston, Illinois, dedicated it on June 9. Total project duration, from contract to dedication, was only five months!
At the dedication concert by Dr. Barnes, the following inscription appeared on the front of the dedication brochure:

The Gift Organ . . . is presented to The State Teachers College of Minot, by the Faculty, Alumni and Students of the college and their organizations, generously and appreciatively aided by and supported by citizens of the City of Minot.
In his program, Barnes commented about the tonal design of the organ. His program was as follows:

Grand Choeur Dialogué, Gigout
Reverie, Bonnet
Caprice Héroïque, Bonnet
Choral Improvisation, Karg-Elert
The Legend of the Mountain, Karg-Elert
Andante (Sixth Symphony), Tchaikovsky
Scherzo (First Sonata), James H. Rogers
Pantomime, de Falla
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, J. S. Bach
Prelude to Lohengrin, Wagner

No other news about the organ is readily available until the departure of the last college organist in 1995. Sixty years after installation, the organ was almost silent. It was rarely used until disassembly in preparation for the building restoration.
One wonders about a possible connection between this Kimball and its much larger cousin 500 miles closer to Chicago, the great Kimball installed in the Minneapolis Auditorium in 1928. Separated by only four years, the Minneapolis Kimball has 121 ranks—120 of them playable by the 5-manual “concert” console, and 26 of the unit ranks plus a Kinura playable by the 4-manual “theatre” console. That organ is in storage in the Minneapolis Convention Center, which replaced the old Auditorium, awaiting city funding for restoration. The tonal design of the Minneapolis organ is incredibly complete for an organ designed in the 1920s, with principal, reed, flute and string choruses throughout. Three full-length 32′ stops (Open Diapason, Contra Violone, Contra Bombarde) give the organ majestic weight. Flutes and strings provide a broad range of colors and volumes. Complete principal choruses form a sturdy backbone. Reeds cover the gamut, from soft and imitative to stupendous. Was this design influenced by the local church musicians who had formed the Minot chapter of the American Guild of Organists about a decade earlier, and most of whom had studied in Europe? Did Kimball learn anything while building this huge organ that they applied to the Minot project? We will never know, but the possible connections are intriguing.

Physical layout
The Minot auditorium is much like other theaters built during this era. The main floor and balcony seats face a stage with a proscenium arch and orchestra pit. The backstage area is small. Restrained décor frames the two pipe chambers that face the auditorium from the side walls, just outside the proscenium. One story above the stage floor, the triangular chambers speak directly into the hall. The large shutter openings hold a double height shutter front. Acoustics are typical of a modest-sized theater, having a “ring” but no distinct reverberation.
This layout is problematic for performances with a chorus on the stage due to the closeness of the chambers to the listeners, which make balance and coordination with the singers a challenge. Discussions to correct this problem included the possibility of sound openings added to the rear of the chambers, and/or possibly a positive organ, able to be controlled from the main console. Funds did not allow this issue to be resolved at the time of restoration.
The left chamber houses the Great/Choir pipes on two levels, with the Pedal 16′ Open Wood on offset chests around the perimeter. The Great, mostly on the lower chest, plays many of the Choir stops as well. The Choir stops and the Harp occupy the upper level.
The right chamber houses the Swell, again on two levels. The upper chest holds the unit stops—the trebles of the Bourdon/Chimney Flute and the Trumpet. Offsets of the 16′ Bourdon, the 16′ Trumpet and other 8′ basses line the perimeter. Below the 16′ Bourdon basses is the “Vox in a box,” with its own tremulant.
Both chambers are full of pipes. Reservoirs on the floor under the chests make access for servicing a challenge. There are many ladders and walk boards, so the pipes are easy to reach for tuning. Lighting is good.

The need for restoration
After 1995 when the last college organist left the university, visitors played the organ occasionally. When dismantled before the building restoration in 2002, it barely played since the damaged basement wind line restricted airflow. Windchest leather was still intact, although the exposed leather of the high-pressure reservoirs was not in good condition and failed shortly after arrival in Lawrence. Bear in mind the upper Midwest experiences huge temperature and humidity swings each season. Humidity ranges from as low as 5% in the winter to more than 90% in August. This exposed the wood and leather parts to a great deal of stress every year of their life. It is amazing to consider that after 60 years the organ still worked as well as it did. This is a testament to the quality of materials and workmanship of the Kimball Company.
Before his retirement, President Erik Shaar spearheaded a building restoration project, which included the organ. The organ committee selected several regional and national organ building and service companies as possible contractors. Five firms submitted bids, and the committee awarded the contract to the Reuter Organ Company of Lawrence, Kansas. A community and college organ committee, chaired by Dr. Doris Slaaten, Professor Emeritus of Business, undertook the fund-raising. A single pledge of $100,000 helped kick off the campaign—far more than the original $5 gift from Mrs. Cotton in 1925! The college renamed McFarland Hall to Ann Nicole Nelson Hall after a victim of the World Trade Center attack of 9/11.
With a decline in the rail industry, Minot has been reasonably successful in finding its fortune in other industries, including hosting a nearby Air Force base and persisting as a major regional shopping destination. While Minot remains a prosperous community of some 35,000, its once large and active churches, many of Scandinavian heritage, are today a shadow of their 1920s glory years. As found in many communities, large buildings built for large congregations with big choirs and active music programs are no longer filled for worship. In an attempt to recapture the crowds, many clergy have resorted to “modern ensembles” and “blended worship,” aiming at a new common denominator that theoretically attracts the young. The organ is often not part of the equation.
Interest in the pipe organ is thus waning in Minot as it is in many communities. The small community of organists, all of whom have made their primary living in other occupations, heroically came to the aid of the university’s Kimball and helped in the fund-raising.

Reuter today
In its 90-year history the Reuter Organ Company of Lawrence, Kansas (<www.reuterorgan.com&gt;) has grown from a regional firm to an industry-leading builder with a national presence. Like most of the major organ builders in the country, the Reuter shop, found less than an hour from Kansas City, is now managed by a new generation. Since the life cycle of a pipe organ is so long, changes in administration and philosophy of the builder do not show quickly on the national stage. This is true of Reuter, where Albert Neutel Jr. (“JR”) has recently taken over management from his father Albert Sr., who in turn had run the company following the long tenure of Franklin Mitchell. Reuter recently moved out of their downtown Lawrence building into a new shop at the north edge of Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas. The building was designed specifically for organ building. Raw materials arrive at the north end, all manner of manufacturing occurs in the middle, and assembly, testing and shipment occur at the south end. Some of the special features of the building are visible in the high assembly room near the shipping dock. There is a wood floor that allows the workers to screw organ parts in place. A gantry crane at the ceiling positions heavy parts anywhere in the room. Windows admit natural light. A balcony on two sides allows workers to move about without the need to assemble scaffolding. This room is large enough that several instruments could be undergoing assembly simultaneously.
There are many other features of the building worth noting. The large central shop includes space for making both wood and metal pipes, wind chests, casework, consoles, keyboards, and other small parts, as well as a large area devoted to pouch board assembly. Other rooms include the computer-controlled CNC router, metal casting, a large spray booth, drafting rooms, several voicing rooms isolated from shop noise, and executive offices and meeting rooms.
The Reuter crew makes almost all of their own parts. Through engineering and experimentation, the staff incorporates reliability and longevity into all of their components. Extensive testing of parts results in improvements based on scientific evidence and experiment. Rebuilds of older Reuters bring naturally aged parts through the shop. Where they find deficiencies of design in areas such as console construction, the staff can design in changes so future parts will be better and last longer.
Reuter is a small company with its roots in the heartland, and its people exhibit the common Midwestern traits of honesty and hard work. Their philosophy is inspired by the musical possibilities that present themselves with each project. They seek to build a solid and reliable product based on their own experiences with electro-pneumatic actions, yet informed by the benefits of computerized drafting and scientific inquiry. Some examples of this are:
• Adapting the Blackinton-style slider chest where suitable.
• Exclusive use of welded copper pipes (not soldered) rather than zinc where there is a possibility of pipe collapse during aging.
• A cleverly engineered solution for mounting horizontal trumpet pipes that encourages tuning stability.
• A method of “preplaying” keyboards during construction so keyboards will not need depth adjustment after installation.
• A redundant key contact that almost eliminates the possibility of dead notes caused by contact failure.
Over the decades, Reuter has built hundreds of organs in a wide range of acoustic settings. This experience has defined the pipe materials and scaling schemes. Most clients choosing to go the route of an electro-pneumatic instrument want the flexibility of a movable console, sub- and super-couplers, extensions and duplexing. Today, Reuter is creating both new instruments and rebuilding old ones.

Details of the restoration
This project was not a total historic restoration in the Organ Historical Society sense of the term. The OHS presents the following guidelines for restoration (last revised in 1986) on their website (<www.organsociety.org/html/historic/restore.html&gt;):
• In general, all extant original components should be preserved and properly repaired.
• Pipework should be carefully repaired by a professional pipemaker, replacements for missing pipes being made of the same material and construction details as the originals.
• Keyboards, stop controls, and other console components should be kept in, or restored to, their original condition.
• Pitman, ventil and other forms of tubular-pneumatic or electro-pneumatic wind chests should be restored using original techniques of design and construction and compatible materials and replacement parts.
• Original bellows, reservoirs, wind trunks, concussion bellows, and other components that determine the wind characteristics of any organ should always be retained and releathered.
• It is highly desirable that a restorer keep detailed records, measurements, photographs, etc. during the course of the restoration work.
Project organizers not only wanted to return the organ to like-new condition, but they also wanted a reliable instrument that will serve the current and future needs of the college. To that end, a genuine restoration was neither desirable nor practical. The console, for instance, was not salvageable. Reuter and the planners undertook the following, as detailed in the contract:

1. Releather all wind chests, including note pouches (1541), primaries (447), stop actions (15). (Reuter carefully reproduced leather thickness under OHS guidelines. All pouch springs were returned to their original notes. When winded there were no ciphers.)
2. Replace stop action connectors and all pitmans (903).
3. Releather Chime action.
4. Releather Harp action.
5. Releather expression motor power pneumatics (20) and primaries.
6. Releather tremolo motors (4).
7. Releather concussion bellows (4).
8. Replace all chest magnets (943).
9. Replace all tuning slides on metal flue stops with new stainless slides.
10. Repack all tuning stoppers on wood pipes.
11. Repair tuning scrolls on reed stops.
12. Make necessary repairs to any damaged pipes.
13. Provide miscellaneous replacements for missing pipes, made to match. (Only a few were missing.)
14. Clean and revoice all reed stops (5), with new tongues as needed. (In fact, the reeds were in such good condition after cleaning that they needed only minor changes.)
15. Clean all metal pipes.
16. Clean all wood pipes and parts and give all a new coat of lacquer.
17. Build a new 3-manual console with a movable platform and storage closet offstage.
18. New microprocessor solid-state switching and combination action.
19. New DC power supplies (organ, console).
20. At the suggestion of a consultant early in the project a digital 16′ extension for Choir Geigen Diapason notes 1–12 was proposed. (A new unit action replaced the straight action. Reuter retained the original action so it can be restored easily in the future if desired.)

A Reuter crew moved the many parts, already in storage, to the shop in Lawrence. There were no drawings of the layout, and none of the Reuter crew had ever seen the organ assembled in its Minot home. They undertook to reassemble everything and succeeded in figuring it out. The crew carefully measured everything, including the rise of the various bellows, before releathering. At the start of the work, plant manager Robert Vaughan told the crew that their charge was to restore all parts to like-new condition, in the style of the original Kimball work. It was not to be “Reuterized.” After cleaning, voicers checked the pipes and made only minor changes. Fortunately, the organ had suffered from “benign neglect” and was essentially as Kimball had left it.
The organ stands today in excellent condition. The clean pipes, with shiny tuning slides, look new. Even the wood pipes, with a new coat of lacquer, could be mistaken for new. New leather on all exposed reservoirs is clean and supple, and the key action is fast and crisp. The new console is beautiful and convenient to play. It has built-in wheels for movement to offstage storage, with just a few wires to connect to a convenient receptacle backstage. Reuter is justifiably proud of the result.
The restoration shows a few minor changes from the original tonal design. The biggest change was converting the 8′ Geigen Principal of the Choir from a straight stop into a unit stop, thus making it available at several pitches on both the Great and Choir. All parts from the original configuration are in storage, according to OHS guidelines, so it could be restored as a straight stop again in the future.

Rededication
Diane Bish played a dedication concert on October 19, 2004 to mark completion of the project. The well-received program adequately showcased the many colors in this small organ:

Now Thank We All Our God, Karg-Elert
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Bach
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Bach
Bolero de Concert, Lefébure-Wély
Carillon de Westminster, Vierne
Jubilation Suite, Gordon Young
Three Hymn Improvisations, arr. Bish
Nimrod (“Enigma” Variations), Elgar
Toccata (Symphony V), Widor

In remarks and in the program text, the organ was presented to the community as complete.

Impressions
Kimball was one of the top builders of the era. Beautifully made pipes sit on a solid mechanism. It is no surprise, then, that this organ holds many lovely sounds.
The strings probably are the most satisfying to our ears today. The Salicional and its Celeste are gems, both of construction and of sound. The tapered Flute Dolce and its Celeste are ravishing in their beauty. Coming in third is the delicate Dulciana and its flat Unda Maris.
There are just a few flutes on this organ. Most interesting is the Choir Concert Flute, of Melodia form in the tenor range, but double length and over-blowing in the melodic range. It mimics the orchestral flute, yet its tone is mild. The round but delicate Swell Rohr Bourdon is the real workhorse, having to provide six pitches in the Swell. The true solo flute is the Doppel Flute of the Great.
There are eight diapasons of various pitches and scales. There is a principal chorus on the Great, with double 8′s, a 4′, and the original Grave Mixture now available as independent 2-2/3′ and 2′. There is no mixture in the organ. The Swell has its own 8′ as does the Choir. The Pedal has a 16′ Wood Diapason. Note in the original dedication program the scaling of some of the manual diapasons. Great Diapason I is scale 40, Swell Diapason is scale 42, and Great Diapason II is smaller at scale 44.
Five reeds occupy positions on all three manual divisions. The Swell Vox Humana and Choir Clarinet are soft and typical of the period. The Swell Corno d’Amour, in the shape of a trumpet, produces the sound of an oboe but with slightly more body. Perhaps because of its unification at three Swell pitches and three Pedal pitches, the large and dark Swell Trumpet dominates the organ.
Through no fault of Reuter, the organ is somewhat disappointing in the room. Reuter did, in fact, bring up the trebles of many ranks to even them out. This organ was designed to play period literature and transcriptions, but it simply isn’t big enough to move the volume of air in the room. A tubby Pedal Diapason, a refined but small Great Diapason chorus, and one dominating reed do not make much of an overwhelming impression in the room. At a recent performance of the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony with the local orchestra, some listeners wondered when the organ was going to come in! This comment may have more to do with the Kimball orchestral voicing than with its effect in the room. A similar comment was heard following a performance of the same symphony by the Minnesota Orchestra with the 120-rank Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball, which had no problem making a big impression by itself!
Is it fair to criticize this organ from a 21st-century perspective for being something it was never intended to be? Probably not! It came out of the theatre organ era when the “classics” were largely transcriptions from the orchestral repertoire. Note the literature Barnes played at the first dedication, which included Tchaikovsky, de Falla and Wagner. Yet this is clearly not a theatre organ. Unlike its much larger brother in Minneapolis, there are no complete diapason and reed choruses, and unification provides most of the upperwork. It is a baby symphonic organ, not intended to be loud and not intended to perform what we now consider to be the classics of the organ literature. It came from a different philosophy—but it was built like a tank!
The rebirth of an organ department appears to be on the horizon (there are 3–4 beginners now), and the organ can serve admirably for teaching the basics of technique. Its lovely and subtle colors are appropriate for teaching and the fundamentals of trio playing, hymn playing and registration. Should the department grow, however, teaching the larger repertoire, organ history, and registration would be a challenge. The faculty would need to rely on the use of nearby (and larger) church organs. This idea is not new, and there are several large organs not far from the campus.

Conclusion
In spite of the Great Depression, the community leaders of Midwestern Minot made a major investment in their college in 1932. They could not see into the future where, just a few years later, teacher salaries would be cut by 40% and faculty would be required to live on campus. They had the foresight to acquire a top-quality organ, also built in the Midwest, which served for many decades before unavoidable wear required a restoration. The Reuter Organ Company we know today, founded just over a decade before the Kimball’s construction, is a company of individuals sharing a similar background. It seems fitting that time should bring the two together. Their meeting was mutually worthwhile: Reuter gained experience from one of the top organ builders of the early 20th century, and Minot got what is essentially a new organ. The community of Minot will be much richer for it.n

Thanks are due to Prof. Charles Dickson of Minot State University for his 1985 draft of “Minot History 1920–1940,” available on the Internet. Thanks also to Kari Files, Selmer Moen, and Gary Stenehjem for behind the scenes information about the project. Thanks also to the staff of Reuter, and especially to JR Neutel and Robert Vaughan who gave a detailed tour of the Reuter shop.

R. E. Coleberd is a contributing editor to The Diapason.

Introduction

Pipe organ building in America today, as portrayed in the music media, is described exclusively as the crafting of new instruments, some with mechanical action and nearly all with carved or gilded cases. This is understandable given the news value of new instruments, but it is nonetheless unfortunate because it ignores a vital segment of organbuilding today: the restoration, rebuilding, refurbishing, updating, and modernizing of existing instruments as well as the building of new instruments from recycled and new material. This activity is primarily the work of individuals and small firms, unsung heroes in the spectrum of organbuilding today. Their work is especially important for two reasons: it speaks to the ongoing primacy of the King of Instruments as the time-honored musical medium in a house of worship, and the determination of congregations, recognizing this fact, to preserve and promote the pipe organ for present and future generations.
In 1966 the author published, in these pages, “The Place of the Small Builder in the American Organ Industry.” His comment that the independent builder “may well assume increasing importance in the future of the pipe organ and the organ industry”1 was perhaps prophetic of the situation today. In many ways this narrative is a continuation and update of that article. Forty years ago the pipe organ industry was dominated by the major builders, whose work accounted for 80% of the new instruments in a market where the discarding and replacement of older instruments was a major portion of the work. Today the situation is vastly different. The market is now only a shadow of its former self. Several major builders have folded, unable to continue under greatly diminished factory production; buyers have welcomed the electronic instrument amid drastically diminished mainline church membership and budgets; and the academic market, with certain notable exceptions, is gone because colleges and universities are market-driven and direct capital resources to enrollment demand.
Yet, organbuilding continues, and pipe organs will always be built in this country and the world over. An important segment of this effort, now demanding recognition, is the work of talented individuals, working alone and in collaboration with other artisans, to craft instruments of singular artistic merit in accordance with public recognition today that a pipe organ is a work of art and the work of an artist. In a statement in 1966 prophetic of the situation today, Robert J. Reich, founder and now retired president of the Andover Organ Company, an early participant in the tracker organ revival in America, stated his philosophy of organbuilding as “the craftsman’s approach to construction and the musician’s approach to tone.”2 Musical interest and skill begin early and often with other instruments, while craftsmanship is acquired through formal and informal training.
This article describes the career of D. Steuart Goodwin: the experiences and individuals who shaped his philosophy of organbuilding, details of several instruments in his opus list, and his contemporary voicing and tonal finishing assignments. Steuart has won the admiration and respect of organ committees, organists, and builders as evidenced by his assignments across the country. Jack Bethards, president of Schoenstein Organbuilders, calls Goodwin a genius:

There is no other way to explain his brilliance in so many fields. Steuart combines the well-honed skill of a master craftsman with the cultivated taste and sensitivity of a fine artist. He has a real gift for design both visual and tonal. He is a musician through and through. His touch with pipes is magical. With ease and efficiency, he can bring the best musical quality out of just about any set of pipes.3

Said Manuel Rosales of Rosales Organbuilders:

My friend and colleague Steuart Goodwin is a rare individual, whose organ building talents combine great skill, good taste, and economy of resources. He is equally at home with visual design, tonal finishing, and hands-on organbuilding. His love of the craft is exemplified by the warm and inviting sounds of his new instruments and many revoicing projects. He and his work continue to be a source of personal and professional inspiration for me, his coworkers, and his clients.4

Early life and education

Donald Steuart Goodwin, Jr. was born on April 9, 1942 in Riverside, California, the son of a building contractor who sang in college musical productions, and a sometime public school teacher and housewife who taught piano privately.5 His grandfather, Phillip Goodwin, taught violin in Redlands, California, and played in a string quartet. Steuart’s folks met at the University of Redlands, a Baptist liberal arts college long known for its fine musical program. Arthur Poister taught organ there in the 1920s when a celebrated four-manual, 54-rank Casavant organ, recently restored and updated, was installed in Memorial Chapel. The organ program at Redlands is primarily associated with Leslie Spelman (1903–2000), a nationally known teacher and pedagogue who joined the faculty in 1937.6
Steuart’s musical interests began early; his 96-year-old mother recalls that he could carry a tune at the age of two. He began cornet lessons in the fourth grade and enrolled in the band at Lincoln School in Riverside. He recalls as a youngster asking his mother about the Estey pipe organ in the family’s Methodist church, but what really turned him on was when, at the age of fourteen, he and his father saw Disney’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and heard Captain Nemo play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. “I went home and played my older sister Jane’s recording over and over, checked out books at the library on organbuilding, and from that time on I was permanently ‘hooked’,” he says.7
Eager to study organ, Steuart approached Roberta Bitgood, organist at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Riverside, who had studied organ with Clarence Dickinson and who was later national president of the AGO. She suggested he begin with a year of piano instruction, which he did, before studying with her for two years, in the 11th and 12th grades.8 While in high school, his future organbuilding career began when he installed a three-rank Robert Morton theatre organ in his family’s garage. His theatre organ interest continued and became part of his work.
In 1959 he matriculated in the music program at the University of Redlands, majoring in composition under Wayne Bohrnstedt, having already written two chorale preludes for organ and a sonata for woodwind quintet. He sang in the University Choir his freshman year and played in the concert band all four years. In 1961, his sophomore year, he won the $800 first prize in the Forest Lawn Foundation Writing Awards Contest with an essay entitled, “The Organ Builder Finds His Place.”9 During Goodwin’s junior year, the band director persuaded three trumpeters to switch to French horn, which was a wise move for Steuart as he went on to play horn for 13 seasons in the University-Community Symphony—until it was converted to all union professionals.10 In recent years he has played French horn in a woodwind quintet and in the Redlands Fourth of July Band.
Goodwin studied organ at Redlands with Raymond Boese (1924–1988), who came to Redlands in 1961 to join his former teacher and now colleague Leslie Spelman in the music department.11 By his junior year, Steuart had become dissatisfied with the Wicks, Harry Hall (New Haven), and Robert Morton practice organs on campus, all dated and woefully inadequate for modern pedagogy and performance. He convinced the school that they needed a tracker instrument, having been listening avidly to recordings by E. Power Biggs playing and narrating tracker organs in Europe. Scouring classified ads in The Diapason, he found an 1870s George Stevens (Cambridge) instrument for sale by Nelson Barden.12 After months of negotiating with school officials, the parties reached an agreement, whereby the school would pay for the instrument and shipping, and Goodwin would install it in Watchorn Hall. In gratitude for this effort, the school awarded him three credits toward graduation.13 Steuart’s senior recital at Redlands, featuring his own compositions, included a Trio for horn, violin and piano, a Quintet for woodwinds, a Sonata for organ, and a Suite for brass.14 He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1964.
During this period he built a small organ with paper pipes on which he could play a Haydn clock piece (see photos). Then, in a remarkable coincidence, E. Power Biggs played a recital on the Casavant in the Redlands chapel. Goodwin showed him the paper-pipes organ, and Biggs, unprompted, played that particular Haydn piece on it. Recognizing Steuart’s interest and promise, Biggs suggested that he apply for a Fulbright scholarship to study organbuilding in Europe. In his letter of recommendation to the Institute of International Education, Biggs wrote:

Steuart Goodwin has the possibly-unusual wish to study organ building in Europe, preferably in the center of fine organs, old and new, which is Holland. . . . I cannot think of anyone who would be more qualified for a Fulbright grant than Steuart Goodwin, nor anyone who could make better use of the opportunity. Already at Redlands he has proved his theoretical grasp of the subject, and his ability to transform ideas into action, and practical results.”15

The choice for the Fulbright year abroad for Goodwin, 1964–65, was between Flentrop and von Beckerath. He chose Flentrop because most Hollanders speak English, and his German was very limited. His experience was mixed, probably unlike that of most Fulbright scholars, he comments. He was assigned to the pipe shop where he acquired pipemaking skills, but he had a brief run-in with Mr. Flentrop. Inadvertently interrupting a conference while trying to introduce himself, he was subsequently ushered into the maestro’s office and severely scolded. “If we had been Germans you would have been thrown out immediately,” Flentrop said, adding, “you can stay here if you will simply work in the pipe shop and keep quiet. Try to observe the Dutch boys and behave as they do.”16 This meant never asking questions—asking questions was unheard of for an apprentice. He was never allowed to see the company woodworking shop in Koog an de Zaan. He did, however, make several sets of pipes for the Rugwerk division of the large four-manual Flentrop instrument in St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.
At the end of his Flentrop sojourn, Goodwin met with Dr. Martin Vente, internationally renowned organ historian and scholar, who provided him with a map locating important Dutch organs nearby. He spent several days traveling by train and bicycle to see many of them. The one that deeply impressed him and would greatly influence his emerging tonal philosophy and mark his work today was at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, ironically dismissed by Flentrop as too romantic.17 “I suffered something of a cognitive dissonance over this, since Flentrop represented the Neo-Baroque ideal espoused by Biggs,” Steuart comments. “I was supposed to like the Baroque, but found myself more deeply moved by the 19th-century voluptuousness of this instrument.”18
Returning from Holland, he opened a small shop in San Bernardino, soon welcoming an opportunity to move to a larger, well-equipped facility nearby, the former Fletcher Planing Mill, whose owner was retiring. There he built three small tracker organs and rebuilt two. Opus 1, a six-rank, two-manual tracker for the Fine Arts building at the University of Redlands, was originally purchased by the organ professor, Raymond Boese. He sold his interest to the university, which paid Steuart a nominal sum and traded him the Hall and Morton instruments. The stoplist comprised a Gemshorn 8' and Principal 2' on Manual I, a Gedeckt 8' and Rohrflute 4' on Manual II, and a 16' Bourdon and 4' Choral Bass on the Pedal, plus the usual couplers. His Opus 2, 1972, was an 11-rank, two-manual tracker for the Fourth Ward Mormon Church in Riverside. In 1973 he built Opus 3, a one-manual, four-rank rental organ. This instrument was used at the Memorial Chapel, University of Redlands, for the Feast of Lights one year, and has been rented by the Ambassador Auditorium and by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestras for use in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Hollywood Bowl. It is now in a home in Altadena.19 Reflecting on Opus 1 and 2, he describes this period as his Biggs, Flentrop, Schlicker days and says:

In each of these first two small organs there was to be only one independent eight-foot rank on the Great. It needed to work as an accompanimental sound as well as the foundation for a small principal chorus. At St. Bavo in Holland, I had heard an unforgettably warm tapered hybrid stop called ‘Barpijp,’ which inspired me to use a Gemshorn instead of a less flexible Principal or Stopped Flute. I experimented with using Gemshorns in a Swell division, but soon grew out of that and came to greatly prefer real string tone.20

During this long period of apprenticeship including travel, reading, talking with organists and organbuilders, and perhaps most importantly listening—to records and instruments—his philosophy of organbuilding and tonal ideals were taking shape, and he made certain fundamental decisions about the direction of his emerging career. He determined that he wanted to work individually, expressing his own artistic concepts, free from the constraints of established large builders where opinions differ, compromises are often the rule, and mimicking some academic paradigm or current fashion is required. His primary goal became to achieve “a certain populist sensibility when it comes to providing what will please congregations and audiences.”21 “Many times I have wondered whether to stay [in Redlands], but if I were to work for a nationally known organ builder, I would lose the independence I have here,” he told the San Bernardino Sun-Telegram in 1978.22 And as he told columnist Nelda Stuck of the Redlands Daily Facts in 1987, “There is no area of music I can think of where there are so many factions and arguments about style,” referring to Baroque vs. Romantic pipe organs and tracker vs. electro-pneumatic action.23

Trinity Episcopal Church

Opus 4, an instrument in which he takes particular pride, illustrates the scope of Goodwin’s early work and evidences his talents in voicing and case designs: the 35-rank, 31 speaking stops, three-manual tracker in Trinity Episcopal Church, Redlands, California. Originally built in 1853 by the prominent New York City builder George Jardine for the First Presbyterian Church in Rome, New York, it was acquired by St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Rome in 1908, where it was rebuilt by C. E. Morey of Utica, New York. Meanwhile, Trinity Church in Redlands installed a three-manual Austin, Opus 111, in 1904.24
The Jardine-Morey organ was acquired through the Organ Clearing House, and over a period of 19 months was rebuilt, together with parts of the Austin, as an eclectic instrument combining 802 original and 838 new pipes for a total of 1640 (see 1975 stoplist). This project illustrates the amalgamation of older and new material into an instrument of singular artistic merit. Through a vision of what these two instruments together could and should be, Goodwin was able to “see” how the skilful blending of solo and foundation stops would produce vibrant and colorful choruses and ensembles. This organ fulfills Goodwin’s conviction that there has to be a visual-sonic relationship, i.e., a relationship between what you see and what you hear (see photos). “A pipe organ should be capable of choruses, amalgams of many tones from many pipes, producing a rich, subtly infused musical statement,” he told Dennis Tristram, a reporter for the Riverside Daily Press newspaper.25
In an arched nave opening three lancet arches were formed of oak and filled with 15 newly painted and stenciled dummy pipes retained from the Austin façade. Trinity Church has been described as an example of 19th-century Anglo-American architecture, which led to the chancel case design that Steuart based on the case at Peterborough Cathedral in England designed by Arthur George Hill (1857–1923), described as one of the great Victorian organ builders.26
During the construction of this organ Steuart joined the choir, and ultimately became confirmed as a member of the church. This has provided an unusual opportunity for the builder to repeatedly update and modify the instrument over many years, both tonally and mechanically. The large single bellows was replaced a number of years ago with individual regulators for each division, resulting in steadier wind and the possibility of divisional tremulants. More recently electric stop and combination actions were installed, several ranks were added and others moved around, giving the organ more scope and a more English flavor (see 2004 stoplist).

Tonal evolution

Goodwin’s work is especially noteworthy because it represents the crafting of instruments embracing the required resources in tonal families and pitches capable of performing the great music of antiquity as well as today’s requirements, but one that is free from the strident and narrow definitions of Baroque, Neo-Baroque, North German, South German, or American Classic stoplists, scales, wind pressures, and voicing. These eclectic instruments, beginning with the work of individual artisans and small shops, have influenced a new style of organs, free from the prejudices against stops that in the 1950s were considered “old hat” and indicative of an obsolete organ that should be replaced. Formerly verboten stops—the Melodia, Cornopean, Harmonic Flute, and Vox Humana, for example—are now recognized for their intrinsic musical content and are often embraced without hesitation by many builders who incorporate them in their instruments, confident of their ongoing musical value. This approach extends to the use of wooden flue work and open flutes, a defining characteristic of American organbuilding from the very beginning, but largely eschewed in the 1950s in favor of metal ranks and tapered, half-tapered, stopped, and chimneyed stops.
Steuart’s Opus 5 was a restoration for St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Upland, California, of E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings’ Opus 734, 1873, formerly located in the First Baptist Church in Bloomington, Illinois. Opus 6 is a four-rank, two-manual house organ, featuring an ornate case and suspended action (see photo).27 This is an early example of an elaborate 18th-century case as built by the Dutch and Germans and pioneered by John Brombaugh in America at a time when the European builders were building modern cases in this country. In 1978, in a brief detour from mechanical action, Steuart built a two-manual, six-rank unit organ with electric action for the United Methodist Church in Yucaipa, California. “I never built another unit organ for a church,” he comments. “I am enthusiastic about the unit principle for a theatre organ, but you can easily overdo it in church work if you are concerned about good tone.”28
In 1978, David Dixon, who met Manuel Rosales at Schlicker in Buffalo and who became his partner in Los Angeles (and who later returned to Schlicker before his untimely death at an early age), approached Steuart about working for them, which he elected to do. He assisted in their introduction to tracker work, in designing cases, traded organ philosophy with Manuel, and acquired some refinements in voicing technique from Dixon.
Opus 8, a 13-rank, two-manual electropneumatic action organ for the First Baptist Church in Colton, California in 1979, marked a major milestone in Goodwin’s tonal philosophy, and contains elements that characterize his later work. In earlier years he was interested in tracker action, but over time came to believe that even 11 ranks (Opus 2, Fourth Ward Chapel, L.D.S. Church, Riverside) in a tracker aren’t very flexible. He became convinced of the value of a unit Gedeckt stop, which he first used in Colton and subsequently on several 12- or 13-rank instruments (see stoplists for Colton and St. George’s Episcopal Church). He began searching for a small, flexible church organ design, and the unit Gedeckt was part of the answer. “I hit upon it almost by accident while contemplating for Colton how to best use a couple of pitman chests incorporating one unit chest,”29 he comments, adding:
“The concept begins, as usual, with a complete principal chorus, 8' through mixture, on the Great. Next, on the Swell, I use a pair of strings (real string tone, not hybrids), a medium-bright Trumpet, and (where space and finances permit) a 4' Principal or Fugara. Budgetary concerns generally limit independent pedal ranks to the ubiquitous 16' Bourdon. The Great also contains an open metal flute, which, in the Colton prototype, was originally part of an Aeolian house organ. The pipes looked ridiculous to one brought up on Neo-Baroque ideals. The heavily nicked mouths were cut-up two-thirds in a half circle, and, yet, when you blew on them they were magically beautiful. I began to realize that you couldn’t depend on what other people said was good, you had to trust your own ears.
“The 85 to 97 pipes of a Lieblich Gedeckt are located on a unit chest in the Swell box. This rank is made available at three pitches on the Great, six on the Swell, and four to six pitches on the Pedal. Importantly, the Gedeckt stop tabs on each division are grouped together to the right of the straight stops and couplers, and they are not affected by the couplers.
“This arrangement makes the structure of the tonal design quickly apparent to an organist, while simultaneously making registration practically goof-proof. For instance, it is impossible to mix the derived mutations on the Swell with the principal chorus on the Great. I settled on the Lieblich Gedeckt for the one unified rank because it blends well at all pitches and because the pitch-beats caused by an equal-tempered rank used at mutation pitches are only barely discernible.
“In an organ of only 12 or 13 ranks, one can make dozens of useful combinations and build ensembles suggesting a much larger instrument. For instance, on the Pedal the 51⁄3' through 2' pitches—when used with the Great chorus coupled—reinforce the 16' line and create the impression that there is a Pedal mixture. A solo Cornet effect can be registered as follows: couple the string and celeste to the Great and silence them on the Swell using the Unison Off. Then set a solo combination of Gedeckt pitches such as 8', 4', 22⁄3' and 13⁄5' on the Swell (tremulant optional).
“The point of all this is to provide excellent sound and unusual flexibility in a small church organ design. To keep these organs even more affordable, we incorporate many used parts and pipes. A brand new console shell is hardly a necessity when so many are available used. I like to put the money where it counts the most—in careful voicing and tonal finishing, new electronic relays, and high quality visual designs.”30
The discovery of the Aeolian open metal flute, quixotically called Flute Piano (apparently for people barely musical and certainly not organists) was to mark a milestone in Goodwin’s career. Placed in the Great of his instrument in Colton, it proved to be of such great value as both a solo and ensemble stop that it led him to incorporate 8¢ open flutes on that division routinely. Most instruments, having a Chimney Flute on the Great and Gedeckt on the Swell, don’t have the flexibility of an open 8' flute, an important color in his judgment, adding, “I voice it quietly in the bass and midrange and somewhat ascendant from middle C up so one rank can be used three ways: as an accompaniment stop in the left hand, a solo stop in the treble and a lighter foundation than a Diapason in a Principal chorus.”31
Perhaps the most impressive example is found at Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz, California. Built in 1889 on the site of one of the famous Spanish Missions, Holy Cross is an imposing neo-Gothic brick building with splendid acoustics. Starting with a 13-rank A. B. Felgemaker tracker obtained through Alan Laufman and the Organ Clearing House, Goodwin added 10 ranks including an open metal flute, two mixtures, two chorus reeds and a string celeste (see before and after stoplists above right, and photo on page 28).
In 1995, Steuart installed his Opus 15, a remarkably cohesive two-manual and pedal organ of 12 ranks, featuring the unit Gedeckt and the 8' open flute discussed above in St. George’s Episcopal Church, Riverside (see stoplist on page 26, and photo left). The striking white oak case is accented with bronze moldings and padouk wood stripes.32

Voicing and tonal finishing

In 1980 Steuart became associated with the Schoenstein firm in San Francisco, which marked still another chapter in his career, one that would grow and distinguish his work today. He worked closely with Jack Bethards, Schoenstein president, in the major renovation of the epic Aeolian-Skinner organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, where he did most of the flue voicing. Bethards does extensive consulting coast-to-coast, and when he concludes that the major problem with an organ is inferior tonal work, he often recommends Steuart, who, working with his assistant Wendell Ballantyne, has had nationwide assignments: New York, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina. Reworking an older instrument almost always begins with a sensitive new organist, and one job leads to another. This work typically involves removing sizzle and chiff, increasing foundation tone, repitching a mixture with new breaks, and replacing unsuitable pipes. With his fine reputation as a voicer and finisher, when prospects hear his work, they want the same thing. For example, Steuart’s current work at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the direct result of his work at Myers Park Baptist Church there. Goodwin’s recent theatre work includes voicing, in collaboration with Lynn Larsen, a large theatre and romantic instrument in the home of Adrian Phillips in Phoenix, Arizona, and completing a mostly seven-rank Wurlitzer organ in his own home in Highland. His much admired tonal work on the epic four-manual, 26-rank Wurlitzer in Plummer Auditorium, Fullerton, led to his election to the governing board of the Orange County Theatre Organ Society.33

Summary

In a varied career marked by many accomplishments, Steuart Goodwin represents the individual organbuilder, working alone or in collaboration with others, a vital segment in the spectrum of organbuilding in America today. Long neglected but deserving of greater recognition, the work of these persons may well assume greater significance in the future of the trade and the instrument. Beginning with a rich musical background, often both instrumental and vocal, which continues, they acquire the knowledge and skills of building the pipe organ through travel, reading, observation and apprenticeship. In their deep commitment to the King of Instruments, they gladly sacrifice more lucrative occupations. Today and tomorrow, amid the manifold and far-reaching changes in our culture, the majestic pipe organ is recognized as a work of art and the work of an artist. There can be no better example of this truth than the life and work of Steuart Goodwin.
 

Steuart Goodwin & Co. Opus List

1. 1970. Two-manual, six-rank tracker practice organ. Now in home of Dr. Harold Knight in Dallas, Texas.
2. 1972. Two-manual, 11-rank tracker, 4th Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Riverside, California.
3. 1974. One-manual, four-rank portable rental organ. Now in home of Bruce and Mary Elgin, Altadena, California.
4. 1976. Three-manual, 35-rank tracker, Trinity Episcopal Church, Redlands, California. With components of an 1852 Jardine from Rome, New York, obtained through the Organ Clearing House.
5. 1977. Two-manual, 17-rank tracker, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Upland, California. Rebuild of E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings #734, 1873, obtained through the Organ Clearing House.
6. 1978. Two-manual, four-rank practice organ in the home of Frances Olson, Mount Baldy Village, California.
7. 1978. Two-manual, six-rank unit organ, now in St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corona, California.
8. 1979. Two-manual, 13-rank electro-pneumatic, First Baptist Church, Colton, California.
9. 1984. Two-manual, 13-rank tracker, Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral, San Bernardino, California. Rebuild of Moller #1701, 1913, obtained through the Organ Clearing House.
10. 1988. Two-manual, 23-rank tracker, Holy Cross Church, Santa Cruz, California. Based on A. B. Felgemaker #506, 1889, enlarged and considerably modified visually and tonally.
11. 1991. Two-manual, 11-rank, electric action, Stake Center, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Simi Valley, California. Incorporates many pipes and parts of Moller #5482, 1928, obtained through the Organ Clearing House.
12. 1992. Two-manual, 13-rank electro-pneumatic, Fontana Community Church, Fontana, California. Incorporates console and many pipes from the church’s 1920s Spencer organ.
13. 1993. Three-manual, 38-rank, electric slider chests, First Christian Church, Pomona, California. Extensive tonal revisions. Based on Hook & Hastings #2240 with prior modifications and additions by Ken Simpson and Abbott & Sieker.
14. 1995. Two-manual, 19-rank, electric and electro-pneumatic, St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Lakewood, California.
15. 1995. Two-manual, 12-rank, electro-pneumatic, St. George’s Episcopal Church, Riverside, California.

Other work

The tonal finishing team of Steuart Goodwin and Wendell Ballantyne has done extensive work on organs in California, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, Texas and Utah.
Steuart has worked on many case design and voicing projects with Rosales Organbuilders and Schoenstein & Co. For photographs and details visit .
For research input and critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper, the author gratefully acknowledges: Edward Ballantyne, Jack Bethards, Ken W. List, Albert Neutel, Donald Olson, Michael Quimby, Robert Reich, Manuel Rosales, Jack Sievert, and R. E. Wagner.