by R.E. Coleberd
Introduction
The turn of the twentieth century was a watershed era in the rich and colorful history of pipe organ building in America. Enterprising and resourceful builders, armed with the new non-mechanical actions, rode the crest of a tidal wave of rapidly growing markets. New markets emerged and expanded at an exponential rate: mortuaries, fraternal lodge halls, theaters, and mansions of the wealthy. Tubular pneumatic and later electro-pneumatic windchests and detached consoles, with virtually unlimited configurations offering unprecedented mechanical and tonal versatility, redefined the King of Instruments and made it ideally suited to the space and location requirements of these new venues. In the church market, the cornerstone of the industry, demand reached a crescendo, both in the mushrooming urban industrial centers and in the rural and small-town hinterland, bolstered by record prosperity in industry and agriculture.
From today's perspective, it is perhaps surprising to learn that organbuilding was then considered to be in the mainstream of American business. The industry attracted entrepreneurial and mechanical talent as well as capital from local business development agencies and from wealthy individuals who purchased stock in an organ enterprise to add to their investments. New nameplates appeared and established firms expanded in response to the feverish demand. In addition to Aeolian, Austin, Kimball, Möller, Skinner and Wurlitzer, firms that rose to prominence in the ensuing decades, the industry comprised supply houses, notably pipemakers Gottfried and Pierce, whose voiced metal pipework made possible a plethora of small builders. Some firms prospered, weathering the storms of the inherently high risk business of organbuilding, while others flourished briefly and then disappeared, the victims of brutal competition, poor management, the ups and downs of the business cycle and natural disasters.
The Stevens Piano and Organ Company of Marietta, Ohio, a onetime music retailer and later reed organ manufacturer, built pipe organs for a brief period beginning in 1909 and probably ending in 1913. Today we know of only five Stevens church organs extant, all rebuilt, and one theater organ of record, long gone. Surely there were more. The historical importance of the Stevens firm lies not in the number of instruments they built, nor in any noteworthy mechanical and tonal innovations. Its significance rests, in the author's judgment, in the fact that it uniquely symbolized several of the salient characteristics of American organbuilding during this pivotal epoch.
Industry Markets and Trends
The early 1900s were an auspicious time to be in the business of building pipe organs. The decades before and after the turn of the century were a period of record prosperity throughout the economy and especially in agriculture. The wholesale price index for farm products in 1911 was 33 percent higher than in 1890 while the price of household furnishings, a measure of living costs, was up only six percent. In another comparison, real earnings of all employees (money wages factored by prices) rose 24 percent between 1900 and 1911, in contrast to a rise in the Consumer Price Index of only 13 percent during this period.1
Added to this were broad societal changes which translated into rising per capita real income and a sense of well-being. These included a decline in the birth rate and thus a reduction in the number of persons supported by a wage earner, a larger proportion of adults supporting themselves including, for example, wives and daughters freed from domestic chores by labor saving devices and seeking employment, and an increase in governmental services. Elsewhere, as Paul Douglas, an economist and former U.S. Senator from Illinois, noted in his epic work Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926, "an extension of free education, of playgrounds and parks and of public health, all contribute to increase the real income of the working-class."2
Prosperity throughout the economy brought far-reaching changes in the market for keyboard instruments. Households "traded up" from the reed organ to the more expensive piano with its greater musical versatility. As Robert Gellerman notes in The American Reed Organ and the Harmonium: "The reed organ reached its peak of popularity about 1890. . . . After 1900 the piano, the player piano, and the phonograph began to replace reed organs as the musical instrument in the home."3
In the church market, farmers and small town folks, having satisfied their short-term standard of living, funneled streams of cash into their parishes, creating an enormous demand for a small, compact and functional pipe organ, often to replace a reed organ, what we now call the commodity segment of the market.4 This lush market was recognized early by Estey, Farrand & Votey, Hinners, Kimball, and Möller, manufacturers of reed organs, who were weary of the brutal competition in reed organs, a market that had peaked and leveled off while, conversely, the pipe organ market was growing like a tropical weed. John L. Hinners, the Henry Ford of the pipe organ, built an affordable instrument for the small church just as Ford manufactured an inexpensive motorcar for the masses.5 Other firms identified in the tracker segment of the commodity market were Barckhoff and Felgemaker, while in non-mechanical action Estey was initially prominent but soon virtually all builders were active. Coincidentally, these two actions overlapped; the Hinners peak year was 1911 but by then Estey was well established.
With the first public exhibition of non-mechanical action at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, and especially after the advent of the Austin Universal Air Chest, even today a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, the days of the tracker were numbered.6 Builders became acutely aware that they must come up with a workable non-mechanical system or they could not compete and survive. They scrambled to find an answer. One solution was to solicit an individual experienced in non-mechanical action who was looking for an opportunity and who could be persuaded to join a firm and bring with him a time-tested system, thus avoiding the uncertainty and potentially high costs of untried and unsatisfactory mechanisms. Another was to preempt the scheme of a competitor with perhaps just enough minor changes to call it original so as not to provoke a patent infringement lawsuit. The emerging tubular pneumatic ventil windchests, broadly categorized as "lever" and "cone valve," were remarkably similar within each major type.
Reed organ manufacturers enjoyed virtually free entry into the pipe organ business. They already had an established brand name signifying product acceptance, catalog and music store distribution, and a labor force with woodworking skills. And now they had a steady supply of quality voiced metal pipework from eastern suppliers Gott-fried and Pierce. The importance of metal pipe suppliers to the fortunes of these soon-to-be pipe organ builders cannot be overestimated; without these sources, numerous nameplates would not have appeared. It was no coincidence that Hinners began building pipe organs in 1890, the year Gottfried began his pipemaking venture. From 1890 until the 1920s, Hinners bought all of its metal sets from Gottfried.
Collins Stevens
Collins R. Stevens (see photo) was born in Pittsfield, Vermont on October 29, 1848.8 His large family traced their ancestry to one Andrew Stevens, a soldier in the Revolutionary War who settled in Barnard, Vermont in 1777.9 Stevens was educated at the Royalton Academy where his musical training was under the direction of Professor C. L. Howe, a pupil of the legendary Eugene Thayer.10 In 1859 Stevens began an eighteen-year tenure with the Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro which would profoundly influence his future career.
In 1877, with his musical training and practical experience in the Estey factory, and perhaps mindful of the limited opportunities for an outsider in a family-owned business, Stevens elected to go into business for himself. He moved to Marietta, Ohio, an historic town at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers, founded in 1788 as the first settlement and headquarters of the Old Northwest Territory, where he opened a retail music store.11 Soon Stevens was well-known and respected in the community. He gave private music lessons, both vocal and instrumental, was active in several chapters of the Masonic Lodge, and was organist at the Congregational Church. His store featured sheet music and supplies along with such well-known makes of reed organs as Clough & Warren, Burdette, Wilcox & White, and New England. He also stocked Knabe, Lindeman & Sons, and James & Holstrom pianos.12
Stevens had, perhaps, considered the possibility of entering the reed organ manufacturing business. He was, most likely, kept informed of developments in the industry, in part by his acquaintance with Estey and also by traveling salesmen. He appears to have discussed this prospect with Orin C. Klock, a traveling representative of a New York piano house and described by the local press as "one of the best salesmen in the business."13 In 1892, local promoters, trustees of "The Bond Fund," offered $10,000 to the Lawrence & Son piano company of Boston to relocate to Marietta.14 This signaled to Stevens that money was available and he sprang into action. First, he--or quite possibly Klock--obtained an offer from Oswego, New York, to establish a reed organ factory there and then he successfully parlayed this into a matching offer from Marietta.15 Collins Stevens then journeyed to Chicago to call upon reed organ manufacturers there and apprise himself of the latest techniques which together with his Estey experience would enable him to begin production.16 The new enterprise, ostensibly a joint venture between Stevens and Klock, was initially reported to have been incorporated in West Virginia in 1892 as the Stevens & Klock Company with a capitalization of $36,000. The first instruments were built under the Stevens & Klock logo. Soon, however, the name was changed to the Stevens Organ Company, occasioned by "the retirement of the junior partner." Subsequently, the logo changed as the company was renamed (perhaps reorganized with new capitalization) the Stevens Organ and Piano Company.17 D. B. Torpy, whose extensive local business interests included glass, oil, flour milling and banking, was named president.18
The new venture was located in the former Exchange Hotel (see photo), a multi-story edifice built in 1831, and said to have been the first hotel built in the upper Ohio Valley.19 The site, on the banks of the Ohio River, afforded convenient water and rail transportation; however, it was vulnerable to river flooding which would prove to be a disaster in the years ahead.
The Stevens Reed Organ
As a measure of his shrewd entrepreneurial instincts, Collins Stevens wisely concluded that to enter the reed organ industry, already oversupplied and highly competitive, he would have to introduce a conspicuously new instrument to penetrate the market. Thus the Stevens Combination Reed-Pipe Organ, illustrated by Style F (see photo), an instrument radically different in appearance, alleged tonal character and mechanical features from conventional models, made its debut. The key features were a piano case, a 71/2-octave compass, and "pipe cells" (rectangular resonators) which combined with a "wide" reed were said to produce a pipe-like tone quality. Another feature was a Swell effect accomplished by rapid and reduced pedaling, instead of the customary knee levers, with pedals shaped exactly like a piano pedal. The Stevens catalog pointed to the "incomparable superiority over organs of the old style of construction."20 The Marietta Register lavishly praised the new organ, calling it "a truly meritorious instrument . . . the finest specimen of parlour furniture ever introduced" which "from a musical standpoint surpasses all organ effects and proves a very formidable rival to the piano."21
The business prospered, with production reportedly reaching over 600 instruments a year by the turn of the century.22 Nonetheless, the reed organ industry would shortly experience a persistent decline and spell the end for certain firms. The newfound household economic prosperity caused consumers to substitute the more costly piano, with its far greater musical capability, now that they could afford it.23 In retrospect, the innovative Stevens reed organ perhaps symbolized a bridge between the reed organ and the piano in the home and the reed organ and the pipe organ in the church.
A. G. Sparling
The career of Allan Gordon Sparling (see photo), was a leitmotif of the character and complexion of pipe organ building in the first half of the last century, illustrating many of the salient features of the industry of that period and the careers of individuals who worked in it. These included the emergence of new nameplates and the demise of others, the overriding importance of non-mechanical action in the fortunes of particular firms, and the mobility of labor, reflecting opportunities for skilled workers, particularly those experienced in the new windchest actions. Sparling was born on August 6, 1870 in Seaforth, Ontario, Canada.24 After a high school education, he began his long career in organbuilding, where he became known as an "action man," in 1892 as an apprentice with the Dougherty Organ Company (reed organs) in Clinton, Ontario. He reportedly worked ten hours a day for three dollars a week. In 1895, he moved to the Goderich Organ Company in Goderich, Ontario. In 1899, marking his entry into pipe organ building, he became shop superintendent of The Compensating Pipe Organ Company in Toronto.25
The Compensating Pipe Organ Company
The Stevens pipe organ venture, while not in a strict business sense a successor to The Compensating Pipe Organ Company, was directly linked to it in the person of Allan Sparling. In a quest for capital, The Compensating Company decided to relocate from Toronto to Battle Creek, Michigan in June, 1902, and in October floated a common stock offering of 7,500 shares, par value $10.00 per share, at an offer price of $3.33 per share.26 In January, 1903, a contract was awarded for a new factory building in the Merrill Park section of the city. In July that year, the legendary Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile motorcar fame, a large stockholder, was elected chairman of the board of of The Compensating Company.27 This firm advertised a combination reed and pipe instrument, the details of which are unknown, but in building conventional pipe organs the business initially prospered.28 Soon, however, it failed, and in early 1906 the firm declared bankruptcy.29 In May of that year, largely through the efforts of the Battle Creek Business Men's Association, the Lyon & Healy Company of Chicago purchased the Merrill Park facility, for a reported $35,000, and moved pipe organ production there, retaining Sparling as shop foreman. To celebrate their good fortune, the businessmen of Battle Creek held a banquet at the Post Tavern on November 1, 1906 in honor of Lyon & Healy officials.30
In 1907 Lyon & Healy delivered a two-manual ten-rank tubular-pneumatic pipe organ, Opus 1476, to the Marietta, Ohio, Unitarian Church (built in 1857), replacing a Jardine tracker instrument.31 In January, 1908, Lyon & Healy elected to discontinue pipe organ building in Battle Creek and sold the facility to the John F. Corl Piano Company which acquired it to combine production there from two plants, in Jackson and Grand Haven, Michigan.32 Following the completion of Lyon & Healy contracts in Battle Creek, reportedly in mid-February, 1908, Sparling remained there for several months to build a three-manual instrument, under the Lyon & Healy nameplate, for the new Independent Congregational Church, whose building was dedicated on October 11, 1908.33
During installation of the Lyon & Healy organ in the Unitarian Church in Marietta, Collins Stevens, ever alert to market opportunities, must have learned that Lyon & Healy was suspending pipe organ production and, most important, that Allan Sparling, a seasoned action man with a time-tested windchest, was available. This was the catalyst for Stevens' entry into the pipe organ business. Soon he and Sparling made a deal, for in January, 1909, a Battle Creek newspaper reported that Sparling was now with the Stevens Company in Marietta.34 He brought with him the Lyon & Healy tubular-pneumatic ventil windchest (see diagram p. 20), which became the Stevens chest and would also follow him to Cleveland when he joined the Votteler-Holtkamp-Hettche Company.
The Stevens Pipe Organ
On Friday evening, July 2, 1909, Professor Llewelyn L. Renwick played the dedicatory recital on the two-manual, eighteen-rank, Stevens pipe organ in the First Baptist Church of Marietta (see photos p. 20). Renwick was described in the local press as a teacher at the Detroit Conservatory of Music and the University of Michigan who had studied with Guilmant, Widor, Dubois and Wager Swayne.35 Assisted by local vocalists and instrumentalists, his recital (see program p. 21) featured several works well-known today as well as others seldom heard in recent times.36
As represented by the instruments in the First Baptist Church in Marietta and the First Methodist Church of Crooksville, Ohio (see stoplists), the Stevens pipe organs were typical of this period which was marked by higher wind pressures, the predominance of eight-foot pitch in the manual stops with nothing above 4' pitch, notably larger scales for diapasons, a 73-note Swell windchest reflecting the prominence of the 4' coupler in building an ensemble, and the ubiquitous Aeoline, an ultra-soft string stop on the Swell.
On the Marietta instrument, eighty percent of the manual stops are of 8' pitch. The scale 40 of the Open Diapason on the Great and the 42 scale Diapason on the Swell manual are, from today's perspective, enormous. They would afford power and fundamental but, most likely, not much harmonic development. As Robert Reich, former president of the Andover Organ Company comments, "In general, the presence of such a large scale Diapason on the Great signifies the intention that this stop alone would dominate the Great and other stops would be used alone or in combinations with each other but not to be expected to add much to the full organ."37 The rationale for the Gross Floete on the Great, which conceivably could have been a Doppel Floete, is perhaps explained by the large Diapason. As Audsley observes, "This valuable stop, when artistically voiced, may be introduced instead of a Second Open Diapason 8 ft., as it combines admirably with a large Open Diapason."38 As Charles McManis notes, this stop could be very useful, with more body than a Diapason and adding fullness to the treble.39
The influence of Estey and Lyon & Healy on Stevens and Sparling in the composition and voicing of this instrument is intriguing but virtually impossible to discern. Reich, a keen observer of Estey and other New England builders of this period, notes that the 4' Octave and Great Octave Coupler would offer something of a Chorus. However, he cautions that in some Estey organs the 4' Octave was a tepid Violina scale and thus was atypical of historic and contemporary definitions of this voice. Compounding the problem of tonal attribution is the fact that small builders of this era ordered metal pipework from suppliers; in Stevens' case information to date says Gottfried, most often without detailed instructions on voicing. Reich adds that the 4' Rohr Floete, if indeed it was a Chimney Flute as opposed to the widely used Harmonic Flute, suggests Estey, who used them on occasion. He observes that the augmented pedal division became common after the introduction of non-mechanical action, adding, "The Double Open Diapason, an expensive stop, provided a suitable foundation under the large scale Great Diapason, a luxury not always found on an organ of this size."40
Stevens' pipe organ venture prospered, and in the fall of 1911 The Diapason reported that he had sold his retail music store, described as "the largest music house in southeastern Ohio," to the Wainwright Music Company for $25,000 in order to devote his full attention to the pipe organ business "in which line his firm is having a very large trade."41 Two years later, however, the business apparently fell victim to the Ohio River flood of March, 1913, which devastated eastern Ohio and which also wiped out the legendary organbuilder Carl Barckhoff downstream in Pomeroy, Ohio. In Marietta, the river crested 23 feet above flood stage and 85 percent of the city was under water.42
The subsequent history of the Stevens business, apart from reportedly suspending operations after the flood, is largely unknown but evidently continued in some manner. Ever alert to developments in the market for musical products, Collins Stevens began manufacturing a phonograph called the "Alethetone." In 1919 the firm advertised as "Manufacturers of Pianos, Organs and Builders of Pipe Organs and Talking Machines," but the 1924 advertisement as "Phonograph Manufacturers" would appear to be more accurate.43 Collins Stevens died of heart disease on April 30, 1921 at the age of 72.44 The company went out of business in 1924 and the building was then occupied by the Sewah Sign Company. It was destroyed by fire in 1937.45
In 1911 Allan Sparling relocated to Cleveland, joining the Votteler-Holtkamp-Hettche Organ Company, perhaps in response to an offer or a more promising opportunity. His move was further indication of the mobility of pipe organ labor and especially the demand for workers with mechanical skills, the so-called "action men." He began building the tubular pneumatic ventil windchest he had used at Lyon & Healy and Stevens. The firm was renamed the Votteler-Holtkamp-Sparling Organ Company in 1914.46 Sparling continued until retiring to St. Petersburg, Florida in 1943.47 Charles McManis, who followed his five-year apprenticeship with Peter Nielsen in Kansas City with Holtkamp in the fall of 1941, remembered Sparling as a very quiet man of medium height and slender build who was then making consoles.48 Sparling subsequently returned to Cleveland where he died of kidney failure on April 27, 1950 at the age of 79.49
Specification
First Methodist Church, Crooksville, Ohio
Stevens Piano & Organ Company,
Marietta, Ohio
Manual Compass, CC to C4 61 notes
Pedal Compass, CCC to G 32 notes
Great Organ
8' Open Diapason
8' Melodia
8' Dulciana
4' Principal
Swell Organ
8' Stopped Diapason
8' Violin Diapason
8' Aeoline
8' Oboe Gamba
4' Flauto Traverso
Pedal Organ
16' Bourdon
16' Lieblich Gedeckt (Polyphone)
Couplers
Swell to Swell 16'
Swell Unison
Swell to Swell 4'
Great to Great 4'
Great to Pedal 8'
Swell to Great 16'
Swell to Great 8'
Swell to Great 4'
Swell to Pedal 8'
Swell to Pedal 4'
Accessories
Expression Pedal
Crescendo
Sforzando Reversible
Great to Pedal Reversible
Wind Indicator
Crescendo Indicator
Sforzando Indicator
Specification
First Baptist Church, Marietta, Ohio
The Stevens Organ & Piano Co.,
Marietta, Ohio
Compass of Manuals, CC to C4, 61 notes
Compass of Pedals, CCC to G, 32 notes
Great Organ
8' Open Diapason-Scale 40, metal
8' Gross Floete, wood
8' Dulciana, metal
8' Melodia, wood
8' Gamba, pure tin
4' Octave, metal
Swell Organ (73-note chest)
16' Bourdon, wood
8' Open Diapason-Scale 42, metal
8' Stopped Diapason, wood
8' Salicional-70 per cent tin
8' Aeoline, metal
4' Rohr Floete, metal
8' Orch. Oboe, reed
8' Vox Humana, reed
Pedal Organ
16' Open Diapason, wood
16' Bourdon, wood
16' Lieb. Gedeckt, wood (Sw)
8' Flute, wood (ext)
8' Gedeckt, wood (ext)
Couplers
Operated by tilting tablets over swell keyboard
Great to Pedal 8'
Great to Great 4'
Swell to Pedal 8'
Swell to Pedal 4'
Swell to Great 8'
Swell to Great 16'
Swell to Great 4'
Swell to Swell 16'
Swell to Swell 4'
Swell Unison Cancel
Pedal Movements
Balanced Swell Pedal
Balanced Crescendo
Sforzando Pedal--this pedal fills a long-desired requirement of the performer, as it enables him to bring the Full Organ into instant use and as quickly back to its former combination.
Great to Pedal Reversible
Adjustable Combinations
3 Pistons placed over draw stops making combinations of Swell Organ and Pedal
4 Pistons placed over Swell Manual operating combinations and releasing same
3 Pistons placed over draw stops of Great, making combinations for Great Organ and Pedal
4 Pistons placed under Great Manual, operating combinations and releasing same.
Accessories
Tremolo
Crescendo-Indicator
