Estey Upright Minuette

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.

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

Introduction
This article is the second in a series exploring the role of the King of Instruments in American culture. The first article, “The Mortuary Pipe Organ: A Neglected Chapter in the History of Organbuilding in America,” was published in the July 2004 issue of The Diapason.1 (Others to follow will discuss organs in hospitals, hotels, soldiers’ homes and war memorials.) The era of the Masonic Lodge pipe organ, embracing close to 700 instruments, began in the 1860s, reached its zenith in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and with certain exceptions ended shortly after World War II.2 In the religious, ritualistic format of the Masonic movement, the pipe organ made a statement. It was deemed essential to crown the ambiance of the journey through the several chapters of the order (Blue Lodge, Royal Arch, Scottish Rite, Shrine and other “Rites”), and it complemented the majestic buildings, often architectural masterpieces, which contributed significantly to an attractive urban landscape. A closer look at the market, the instrument, and the builders reveals key features of this fascinating epoch, which surely belongs in the rich and colorful history of pipe organ building in America.

The Masonic Lodge
The Masonic Lodge was a broad-based, worldwide social and cultural movement with origins in antiquity, which counted the St. John’s Lodge in Boston, established in 1733, as its beginning in this country. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were Masons.3 Encompassing immigration, urbanization, social solidarity and individual identity, it satisfied a desire to belong. Lodge membership was a mark of recognition and status in the community, and a transcending emotional experience in ritual and décor in the otherwise anonymous atmosphere of urban life. A noted German sociologist, Max Weber, visiting America in 1905, spoke of voluntary associations “as bridging the transition between the closed hierarchical society of the Old World and the fragmented individualism of the New World” and saw them performing a “crucial social function” in American life.4 The well-known social commentator and newspaper columnist, Max Lerner, in his epic work America as a Civilization, saw one of the motivations behind “joining” as “the integrative impulse of forming ties with like-minded people and thus finding status in the community.”5 Ray Willard, organist at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Joplin, Missouri (M. P. Möller Opus 3441, 1922), observes that membership embraced all walks of life: from business and professional men, many of them community leaders and perhaps well-to-do, to everyday citizens.6 Masonic membership paralleled population growth and reached a peak in the first three decades of the twentieth century. New York State counted 872 lodges and 230,770 members in 1903.7 Pre-World War II Masonic membership in the United States totaled 3,295,872 in 1928.8
Of special interest is the long-recognized connection between the railroad industry and the Masonic Lodge. Railroad men were lodge men, and railroad towns were lodge towns. The railroad was the predominant conveyance in freight and passenger travel in the first decades of the last century. In 1916, railroad mileage in this country peaked at 254,000 miles, and in 1922, railroad employment reached over two million workers, the largest labor force in the American economy.9 These totals reflected the number of trains and crews, station, yard, and track workers, and the maintenance demands of the steam locomotive. The comparatively well-paid railroad workers were no doubt important in building Masonic temples. In 1920, average wages in the railroad industry were 33 percent above those in manufacturing.10 In one of what must have been numerous examples, Masonic employees of the Big Four Railroad in Indianapolis donated eight art-glass windows on the east wall of the second floor foyer of the Scottish Rite Cathedral there (q.v.).11

The market
The Masonic Lodge market differed significantly from other pipe organ markets. For the larger facilities in metropolitan locations, the Masonic building was typically a matrix of rooms, often on several stories, and each with a different décor, e.g., Corinthian Hall, Gothic Hall, Ionic Hall. Each chapter room required a pipe organ to support the ritual proceedings. The centerpiece of the building was the auditorium, manifestly different from a church sanctuary. Typically square in layout, it featured a large curtained stage in front, cushioned opera-chair seating on the main floor, and perhaps side and end balconies. The pipe chambers were quite often in the proscenium above the stage, with other divisions almost anywhere—in back of the stage, above a side balcony, in a rear balcony, etc. Occasionally, chambers with a pipe fence flanked either side of the stage. The organ console was on the floor in front of the stage.
It was especially important that the auditorium instrument look large. Just as an upright or spinet piano would have been out of place on the stage, so too would a two-manual organ console be inappropriate on the floor in front of the stage. It must be a concert grand piano on the stage and a three-manual, better yet a four-manual console on the auditorium floor, with lots of drawknobs or stop tabs for everyone to see. To achieve this image of “bigness” within the limitations of chamber space or perhaps budget, builders often resorted to extensive unification and duplexing.
The Masonic Lodge pipe organ era began in 1860 when E. & G. G. Hook built one-manual instruments for temples in Massachusetts: in Lawrence, 14 registers, Opus 275, and in New Bedford, 12 registers, Opus 281.12 In 1863, William A. Johnson built a one-manual instrument of nine registers, Opus 144, for the lodge in Geneva, New York.13 In 1867, Joseph Mayer, California’s first organbuilder, built an instrument for the “Free Masons” in San Francisco.14 The three organs built by Jardine in 1869 for New York City, in this case for the Odd Fellows Hall, marked the beginning of what would become a salient feature of the lodge market: multiple instruments for one building, often under one contract and several with identical stoplists.15 (See Table 1.) One particularly interesting example was the three instruments Hutchings built for the Masonic Lodge in Boston in 1899. The stoplists were identical (q.v.), but each one was in a different case to conform to the décor of the room. Wind from a single blower was directed to one instrument by a valve opened when the console lid was raised, turning on the blower.16
The pinnacle of the multiple contract practice came first in 1909, when Austin built twelve organs for the Masonic Lodge in New York City; in 1927, when Möller built nine for a temple in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eleven of the twelve Austins were identical two-manual instruments, eight of the nine Möllers.17 An Austin stock model that found its way into the Masonic market was the Chorophone, introduced in 1916. Austin sold nine of these instruments to Masonic Lodges. Opus 896 was exported to the lodge in Manila, the Philippine Islands, in 1920.18

The instrument
R. E. Wagner, vice-president of Organ Supply Industries, points out that the Masonic Lodge pipe organ followed closely—tonally and mechanically—the evolution of the King of Instruments in this country: from the one- and two- manual classic-style tracker organs of the nineteenth century to a brief sojourn with tubular-pneumatic action at the turn of the century, followed by the symphonic-orchestral tonal paradigm and sophisticated electro-pneumatic windchest and console action in the 1920s. It also followed a return to the American classic style beginning later in that decade.19 The liturgy-based nature of Masonic ritual would suggest a church-type instrument, one in which eight-foot pitch predominated. This was true in the beginning and in smaller instruments.
The three Hutchings instruments in Boston (q.v.), Opus 475–477, were each fourteen ranks.20 The eleven identical Austin instruments for New York City in 1909 had five ranks: an 8? Open Diapason on the Great with four ranks duplexed from the Swell (8? Stopped Diapason, 8? Dulciana, 8? Viol d’Orchestra, and 4? Harmonic Flute). There was no pedal. The twelfth organ on this contract was a 17-rank, three-manual organ with the Choir manual duplexed entirely from the ten-rank Swell manual. The seven stops of the Pedal organ were all extensions of manual stops.21 Austin’s two-manual Chorophone comprised four ranks—Bourdon, Dolce, Open Diapason and Viole—unified into 27 speaking stops from 16? to 2?.22
By the 1920s, the Golden Age of the Masonic Lodge pipe organ, the three- or four-manual organ in the lodge auditorium was frequently an eclectic instrument, embracing theatre stops and even toy counters in addition to traditional liturgical stops. Add to this a “quaint” stop now and then, i.e., a bugle call. Did you ever hear of Solomon’s Trumpet? (See 1926-2000 Kimball, Guthrie, Oklahoma q.v.) As Willard points out, these instruments were designed to play the marches, patriotic selections, and orchestral and opera transcriptions used in ritual work, as well as theatre organ and popular music of the day when the auditorium was used for entertainment.23
The mixing of liturgical and theatre stops reflected the fact that in the 1920s the concept of organ music was broadly defined, and with the introduction of the theatre organ, the distinction between liturgical and theatre voicing and sound was blurred. If anything, the eight-foot pitch tonal palette of the church organ, characterized then by wide-scale diapasons and flutes, narrow-scale strings, high-pressure reeds, and the absence of mutations and mixtures, served to further obscure this distinction.
Two stops particularly symbolic of this era and that disappeared until recently, the Stentorphone and the Ophicleide, were found in large lodge organs. Manuel Rosales, well-known California organbuilder, believes they can best be explained as items of fashion. “As the Hope-Jones ideas influenced the times with very large diapasons, the idea of the Stentorphone being a sort of superstar of the diapason family found its way into legitimate specifications. It was placed on the Solo manual rather than being put on the main divisions, and in that capacity wouldn’t destroy the balance between the stops on the Great. Couple the Solo to the Great and it works to beef things up.”24 With the tremolo on the Solo, the Stentorphone could also be used as a solo stop.
The ophicleide, a 19th-century brass orchestral instrument, was said to have been invented in Paris about 1817. It was popular in symphony and opera orchestras and in military bands of the 1830s and 1840s, being eventually replaced by the modern tuba. As a fashionable organ stop, the Ophicleide might appear on the Great manual as a powerful, high-pressure reed, a double tuba which, when coupled to the customary 8? Tuba on this manual, formed a chorus.25
The predominant characteristics of the three- and four-manual Masonic Lodge pipe organs, with the exception of those built by E. M. Skinner, seem obvious when viewed from the stoplists discussed below. They confirm our assumption that the Masonic Lodge instrument differed markedly from other pipe organs. Beginning with extensive unification and duplexing, the number of stops is double or more the number of ranks of pipes. Pedal divisions with only one or two independent ranks were typical, and duplicate consoles, the second perhaps a two-manual to control two divisions, were found. Sometimes second touch and a roll player were added to the console. The high-pressure reeds of the day, Ophicleide and Tuba, found on the Great division, required higher wind pressure than the flues to achieve their desired tone quality and power—ten inches versus six inchePs—and therefore were placed on a separate windchest. The Vox Humana was often placed in its own enclosure. Each manual division had a tremolo, and often individual stops such as the Diapason, Tibia and Vox Humana had separate tremolos. The entire instrument was often totally enclosed. Duplexing and unification were made possible by the complex and sophisticated switching in windchest and console innovations that marked the American builders during this period and that made their product by far the most technologically advanced in the world.
The three-manual Kimball organ, Opus 6781, in the Denver Scottish Rite Cathedral, now Consistory, with 19 ranks, 50 stops and 1,459 pipes, illustrates these features (see stoplist). On the Great division, five ranks comprise eleven speaking stops—four ranks with extensions—and only the 8? Tuba is an independent (one pitch) voice. The Diapason and Tuba each have their own tremolo. The Solo (second) division comprises 10 ranks and 20 stops, with the Gedeckt unified into six stops, from 16? to 13?5?. The third division, designated the Accompaniment manual, counts four ranks and seven unit stops duplexed from the Great. The organist, Charles Shaeffer, comments that the English Horn on the Accompaniment manual is unique to Kimball, voiced closer to the Oboe in contrast to an English Horn on theatre organs, which resembles an English Post Horn. He adds that the Marimba on the Solo is “reiterating,” meaning that it repeats rapidly and therefore contrasts with the single-stroke Harp on the Great.26 The String Mixture is wired from the Salicional, and the Orchestral Oboe from the Gedeckt and Viol d’Orchestra. The Tibia Clausa is independent and has its own tremolo. The nine-stop Pedal organ is entirely duplexed from the Great and Solo divisions. The bugle call is played by buttons above the keyboards. The manual compass is 73 pipes, adopted by many builders during this period to forgo upperwork and achieve brilliance through the 4? coupler, a primary registration aid.27 All divisions are enclosed, and each manual has at least one tremolo. The toy counter and pedal second touch complete the instrument.
The 8? Wald Horn on the Great, a departure from traditional pipework nomenclature, requires an explanation. A Wald Horn is customarily a chorus reed with English shallots, voiced somewhere between a Trumpet and an Oboe.28 In this example, unique to Kimball and employed briefly, 1922–1924, it is a spotted-metal tapered (one-half) open flue rank of medium scale. With more definition than a stopped flute, but with limited harmonics, it is horn-like and perhaps best described as a heavy spitzflute.29 Noteworthy in Kimball organs, and a lasting legacy of this builder, are the superb strings, the work of the legendary voicer George Michel. As the late David Junchen commented: “Michel’s strings set the standard by which all others were judged. Their richness, timbre and incredible promptness of speech, even in the 32? octave, have never been surpassed.”30

Four and five manuals
The four- and five-manual Masonic Lodge era began in 1912, when Hook & Hastings built a 53-rank, 62-stop, five-manual instrument for the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Dallas. Far less unified than later work and with a 61-pipe compass for manual stops, it reflected the church organ background of this eastern builder. But it did contain a Stentorphone and Ophicleide, two consoles, and a player mechanism.31 The next year, 1915, Austin built a five-manual, 74-rank, 89-stop, 4,860-pipe organ, Opus 558, for the Medinah Temple in Chicago. Now in storage, this instrument was for many years the largest Masonic Lodge pipe organ in America and was, perhaps, the best known among the organist fraternity.32
The four- and five-manual market was largely the province of the nationally known major builders Austin, Estey, Kimball, Möller and Skinner (see Table 2). They used large lodge installations in their sales pitch, and buyers were no doubt influenced by them in their choice of builder. Describing their four-manual Möller, Opus 3441, 1922, in Joplin, Missouri, the Scottish Rite Cathedral states: “There were five four-manual organs built by Möller in the early 1920s similar to the Joplin organ. They are in the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., the Scottish Rite pipe organ in San Antonio, Texas, Temple Beth-El, New York City, and the Masonic Building, Memphis, Tennessee.”33 Michael Brooks, recent Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the St. Louis Scottish Rite Cathedral, points out that his temple is the proud owner of one of four Kimball four-manual lodge organs. The others are Guthrie, Oklahoma (q.v.), Minneapolis (now in storage), and Oklahoma City.34
The lodge market also reflected the work of John A. Bell (1864–1935), a prolific designer, who in 1927 was said to have drawn up specifications for over 500 pipe organs in the eastern United States. Bell, a Mason, was organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh for over 40 years.35 Allen Kinzey, Aeolian-Skinner veteran, says Bell’s stoplists typically included a large-scale, heavy-metal, leather-lipped, unenclosed 8? Diapason on the Great. Also, all manual stops of 16? and 8? pitch (excluding celestes) had 73 pipes, while stops of 4? pitch and above had 61.36 Bell designed instruments for Masonic temples in Cincinnati and Dayton and the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Indianapolis.37 (q.v.)
Indianapolis
The Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner five-manual, eight-division, 77-rank, 81-stop, 5,022-pipe organ in the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Indianapolis, Opus 696-696B, is the largest instrument in the Masonic movement in America today (see stoplist). The building’s title is appropriate because it is most likely the largest such edifice ever built in this country and is beyond doubt the most lavishly appointed, replete with Masonic symbolism at every turn: stone carvings and figurines, 70 art glass windows, and elevator door decoration. This architectural masterpiece is crowned by a 212-foot main tower, housing a 63-bell Taylor (Loughborough, England) carillon. The Medieval Gothic interior features imported Carpathian white oak, Russian curly oak, and Italian, Tennessee and Vermont marble.38
This signature instrument was built in 1929 by E. M. Skinner, with four manuals, 65 ranks, 68 stops, 4,365 pipes.39 Skinner had defined his instrument in building church organs and he stayed very close to this paradigm in his lodge installations. With comparatively limited unification and duplexing, this organ features a mixture, mutations and principal chorus on the Great. This organ reflects the influence of John Bell (q.v.). Manual compass is 73 notes for foundation stops, 8? and below, and 61 notes for 4? stops and above. The First Diapason on the Great is 38 scale, heavy metal and leather-lipped. The Second Diapason is 40 scale, a customary scale for the first diapason. These two stops plus the 16? Open Diapason and 8? Gross Flute are unenclosed. The tremolo on the Great is described as high and low wind, reflecting the difference in wind pressure between the flues and the reeds. The Great reeds are on 12-inch wind as is the entire Solo manual, the latter likely because of the Stentorphone there, also 38 scale, heavy metal, and leathered. The Solo Tuba Mirabilis is on 20 inches of wind and not affected by the tremolo. The Diapason on the Swell is also 40 scale and leathered. The 4? Celestial Harp on the Great is subject to sub and super (octave) couplers. The Cathedral Chimes on the Echo has 25 tubes, from tenor C. A description in The Diapason commented: “Couplers and pistons will increase the number of playing devices at the command of the performer to 158.”40 In 1949, Aeolian-Skinner enlarged this instrument with two new divisions of four ranks each.41 A new five-manual console by Reisner was installed in 1969.42

St. Louis
The four-manual Kimball in the Scottish Rite Cathedral in St. Louis, now awaiting restoration, illustrates other features of the lodge pipe organ (see stoplist). With 113 speaking stops from 54 ranks of pipes, a virtually complete toy counter plus piano, marimba, xylophone, harp, chimes and orchestral bells, it is perhaps the apex of the four-manual lodge instrument, a veritable music-making machine. In this organ, the basic manual stop compass is 61 notes and the 8? pitch dominates the tonal palette. Among the 24 stops from ten ranks on the Great, the Principal Diapason is wood and the Twelfth and Fifteenth are taken from the Waldhorn (q.v.). This instrument doesn’t have a mixture on the Great or pretend to have a principal chorus; it is a collection of orchestral colors, including the luxury of three 16? open flues on the Swell, all oriented to fundamental tone as illustrated by the Phonon Diapason there, which emphasizes the eight-foot tone.43 The unit Gedeckt on the Swell speaks as six stops, from 16? to 13?5?. The Swell has separate tremolos for the Tibia Clausa and the strings. The Vox Humana vibratos on the Swell and the Echo are a tremolo. The Pedal organ counts 25 stops derived from two ranks; a 32? Bourdon, and a 32? Bombarde with three extensions. The rest are borrowed from or extensions of manual stops.

The builders
The lodge market was important to American builders in new installations, repeat sales, replacing trackers with modern instruments, additions and upgrades. The bulk of these organs were, not surprisingly, two-manual instruments, and some were stock models, designed to accommodate what we have elsewhere called the commodity segment of the market.44 For small instruments, there was scarcely any brand preference or real or imagined product differentiation to the buyer. To these lodges an organ was an organ and the sooner the better. As in other markets, a second-hand trade emerged with instruments sold to Masonic Lodges from elsewhere.
Table 3 portrays the work of thirteen builders, names familiar today. The larger firms—Austin, Estey, Kimball and Möller, well known coast-to-coast through numerous installations and with aggressive sales representation—accounted for the majority of lodge instruments. Factory production dominated the industry during this period, and these builders could meet any requirement: budget, placement and timetable. Regional builders Hillgreen-Lane and Pilcher also enjoyed lodge business, as did many local firms. In 1917, Reuben Midmer & Sons counted six organs for the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn. Lewis & Hitchcock built instruments for Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.45 In California, an early last-century firm, the Murray M. Harris Company, built lodge organs for Fresno, Oakland, and San Francisco, California as well as for Santa Fe, New Mexico.46 In 1928, the Rochester Pipe Organ Company built two identical three-manual, 20-rank instruments for the Masonic Temple in Rochester, New York.47 In 1908, the Adrian Organ Company rebuilt a nine-rank, one-manual organ, from two prior locations, for the Masonic Temple in Adrian, Michigan.48
The lodge market also figured in the locational history of the American organ industry. In 1859, the Pilcher Brothers, then in St. Louis, built a one-manual organ for the Golden Rule Lodge there. In April 1863, perhaps in search of a market opportunity, they moved to Chicago where, in September, they contracted to build a one-manual organ for the Oriental Lodge there.49 In 1919, the Reuter-Schwartz Company of Trenton, Illinois built an instrument for the Masonic Temple in Lawrence, Kansas. This prompted their move to Lawrence, having found a source of capital in the Russell family who, in turn, found a business opportunity for their son Charlie, just graduated from the University of Kansas. Charlie Russell became the bookkeeper at Reuter, and the Russell family owned Reuter for many years.50
Many of the larger instruments, sources of pride for these lodges, are regularly serviced and updated as needed, perhaps with major funding from prominent members. When the signature 1926 Kimball in the Scottish Rite Masonic Center in Guthrie, Oklahoma (four manuals, 67 ranks, 72 speaking stops, 5,373 pipes)51 required renovation in 1990, Judge and Mrs. Frederick Daugherty financed the project. The work, by long-time curators McCrary Pipe Organ Company of Oklahoma City, included solid-state switching and relays, new keyboards, and new stop and combination action. A digital recording and playback unit was installed, so the instrument can be played for tours of the building—a common practice in large temples. Completing the project was installation of a full-length 32? Pedal Bombarde, built by F. J. Rogers in England, and a horizontal trumpet, dutifully called Solomon’s Trumpet, reflecting the role of King Solomon and his temple in Masonic ritual.52

Summary and conclusions
The Masonic Lodge pipe organ is another illustration of the role of the King of Instruments in American culture. The Masons, a culturally and socially prominent feature of American life, found the instrument an economic and efficient vehicle in meeting the musical needs of their ritual proceedings. The tonal resources of the larger instruments afforded almost unlimited capabilities in the full spectrum of instrumental music. This was made possible by technological advances in organbuilding, which mark a singular achievement of the American industry. In many locations, these magnificent instruments enjoy the respect and admiration of today’s Masonic membership, and in the larger organ world are recognized as a vital segment in the rich and colorful history of pipe organ building in America.

For research assistance and critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper, the author gratefully acknowledges: Jack Bethards, E. A. Boadway, Michael Brooks, Mark Caldwell, John Carnahan, Ronald Dean, Dave Fabry, Steuart Goodwin, Keith Gottschall, Allen Kinzey, Fred Kortepeter, Dennis Milnar, Rick Morel, George Nelson, Albert Neutel, Orpha Ochse, Don Olson, Louis Patterson, Michael Quimby, Michele Raeburn, Robert Reich, Gary Rickert, Manuel Rosales, Dorothy Schaake, Kurt Schakel, Alan Sciranko, Charles Shaeffer, Jack Sievert, Richard Taylor, R. E. Wagner, Martin Walsh and Ray Willard.

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

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.