Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey

John Bishop

“Just can’t wait to get on the road again.”¹

For over fourteen months during the extraordinary time of Covid, Wendy and I stayed at our house in Maine, leaving our apartment in virus-rich New York City vacant. Until late in 2020, Lincoln County where we live in Maine was counting fewer than twenty new cases each week, and we figured we would stay there until vaccinated. Like so many people around the country, we altered our working lives using Zoom and FaceTime instead of meeting in person. We set up our offices as “Zoom Rooms,” sometimes wearing “go to office” tops over jeans or shorts.

I received my first vaccination shot on my sixty-fifth birthday in mid-March. Once I was on the schedule, I started planning a trip, and I hit the road sixteen days after my second shot. I visited three organ building workshops, a half-dozen organs that were coming on the market, a couple iconic organs (one can never see enough of them), and a church where my colleagues are helping install an important new organ. I drove south on a western route through Virginia and Tennessee to Birmingham, across to Atlanta, and north on an eastern route home through North Carolina and Virginia to meet Wendy for a few days on the Jersey Shore. It was my re-immersion in the craft I have been working in for more than forty-five years, and I came home refreshed and newly inspired.

Variety is the spice of life.

Pipe organs come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. We have organs that are large and small, electric and mechanical, freestanding in cases and enclosed in chambers. We have organs based on ancient European concepts and models, and organs that are purely American, and my trip spanned the far reaches of the organ world. I visited the workshops of Noack Organ Co. (Georgetown, Massachusetts), Taylor & Boody Organ Builders (Staunton, Virginia), and Richards, Fowkes & Co. (Ooltewah, Tennessee), each of which works with a small staff of dedicated artisans building hand-crafted organs in free-standing hardwood cases. Noack is currently working on an organ with sixty stops, and I was lucky to see it being loaded on a truck at the workshop followed by the beginning of its installation at the Catholic Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham, Alabama. Taylor & Boody’s current project is a thirty-eight-stop job for Wheaton College in Illinois, and Richards, Fowkes & Co. is working on a thirty-one-stop organ for Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.² Besides a tour and rich conversations in their workshop, Bruce Fowkes and Ralph Richards took me to see the spectacular four-manual organ by John Brombaugh at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. I am heartened that during this uncertain time, these three outstanding firms are all building substantial instruments at the same time. You can see details about each organ on the builders’ websites.

These three builders are known for building tiny organs as well as instruments with sixty or more stops. Continuo or practice organs with three or four stops are the hummingbirds of pipe organs, and modest instruments with fewer than twenty stops are little gems with gorgeous, intimate voices and carefully balanced choruses, but the big bird of my trip was the behemoth all-American organ in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, an organ with single divisions that include more than thirty stops. (See the cover feature of the November 2020 issue of The Diapason.)

In the May 2021 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–13, I wrote about the efforts of curator Nathan Bryson and his staff of assistants and volunteers to protect the organ during the recent demolition by implosion of the adjacent Trump Hotel and Casino, so the organ was fresh on my mind when I started planning my trip, and I invited myself for a visit. Nathan was the consummate host for my day in the largest organ in the world.

The organs at Boardwalk Hall and the Wanamaker Store (now Macy’s) have each been considered the largest in the world. Now that I have visited both with their curators as my guides, I will take the plunge and explain how an organ earns such a title. At the moment, the Boardwalk Hall Organ is about 53% playable, so the Wanamaker Organ can safely claim to be the largest fully playable organ in the world. The Historic Organ Restoration Committee that oversees the organ in Boardwalk Hall has ambitious plans to bring the organ to fully functional condition. Stay tuned. I will report it when it happens.

The Wanamaker Organ has 464 ranks while Boardwalk Hall has a mere 449, a difference of fifteen ranks, the size of a modest organ, so it wins in the category of most ranks. The Wanamaker organ has 75 independent pedal ranks with 32 pipes (29 notes fewer than manual ranks), while many of the ranks in the Boardwalk Hall Organ have up to 85 notes, accounting for extensive unification and making use of the extended lower three keyboards which have 85, 85, and 75 notes, giving the organ a total of 33,112 pipes compared to the impressive 28,750 pipes in the Wanamaker Organ. That’s a difference of 4,362 pipes, or the equivalent of a seventy-rank organ!

An 85-note rank of pipes allows a continuous scale from low CC of 8′ to high c′′′′′′ of 2′, or as in the case of several ranks in Atlantic City, from low CCCC of 32′ to high c′′′′ of 8′. Unbelievably, there is a 64′ Dulzian Diaphone with 85 notes that goes all the way to the top of 16′. Scrolling down the endless stoplist, I count one 64′ rank (85 notes), eight 32′ ranks, and sixty 16′ ranks. A count like that makes a big organ. You can count for yourself. There are comprehensive lists of ranks, stops, console layout, and pistons and controls at www.boardwalkorgans.org. It would be difficult to calculate accurately, but it is my gut feeling that the Boardwalk Hall Organ weighs a lot more than the Wanamaker Organ.

Vulgar or beautiful?

I have had a number of encounters with the Wanamaker Organ over the past twenty years, both in intimate, personal, and comprehensive visits, and in swashbuckling public performances. This was my fourth visit to Boardwalk Hall, but the first time I heard the organ.³ I was aware of both organs when I was growing up, long before either had any meaningful restoration, but as I was in the thrall of the “Tracker Organ Revival,” dutifully learning early fingerings at Oberlin, I was not creative or open-minded enough to make space for them in my musical comprehension. I assumed that they existed to take part in the biggest-loudest-fastest competitions that lurk throughout our society. How could something with more than four hundred ranks be anything more than the pipe organ equivalent of a freight train? Artistic content? Musical sensitivity? Phooey. I was wrong.

I was fortunate to have experience renovating larger electro-pneumatic organs early in my career, and when I became curator of the organs at Trinity Church Copley Square and The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church), both in Boston, I was immersed in the grandeur of super-sized organs. The Aeolian-Skinner organ at The Mother Church is huge (237 ranks and 13,500 pipes), but less than half the size of those in Boardwalk Hall or the Wanamaker Store. While the organ at Trinity Church (actually two instruments, Chancel and Gallery, playable from one console) was smaller in number of ranks, it was an important part of my understanding of large organs because of the weekly recital series there. Each Friday, I heard a different organist play the instrument. Some were bewildered, bamboozled, even defeated by its complexity, but those organists who could make it sing taught me how a large and varied organ with divisions in four separate locations could combine to produce expressive sweeps, from thundering fortissimos to shimmering echoes that melted away into the frescoed walls.

If a finely crafted organ with mechanical action brings the intimacy of chamber music to the fingers of the organist, the large romantic organ allows the musician to paint majestic landscapes. And the mega-monumental symphonic organ allows expression ranges unheard of otherwise. What do you do with an eighty-rank string division? Paint pictures.

In the arena

When I first arrived at Boardwalk Hall, Nathan “fired up” the organ using files made by Peter Richard Conte, the Grand Court Organist of the Wanamaker Organ, along with several other creative players, and stored in the playback system. Peter is unusual among organists because of his affinity for these exceptional organs. While most of us are used to registering a chorale prelude with a cornet for the solo line and a few soft flutes and a Subbass for accompaniment, Peter is a sonic wizard with thousands of stop tabs and hundreds of other controls that allow him to command the dozens of divisions scattered about in the vast room. Sometimes he throws on a big row of stop tablets as if he was playing a glissando on the keyboard, but more usually, he programs pistons with intricate combinations using stops by the hundreds.

Boardwalk Hall is 456 feet long and 310 feet wide with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that peaks at 137 feet. Its seating capacity is over 15,000, and it is regularly used for rodeos with bull-riding competitions (they truck in enough dirt to simulate a prairie), indoor auto racing, ice hockey, basketball, soccer, and even college football. It was the site of the first indoor helicopter flight, and it is home to the Miss America Pageant. It was surreal to stand alone on the empty floor of the semi-lit hall listening to the organ do its thing with the help of Peter’s bytes. The two main organ chambers are separated in space by the hundred-foot-wide stage. The chamber lights were on, and great swaths of expression shutters were in full view, swishing and fluttering like sensuous thirty-foot eyelashes. This was not “All Swells to Swell.” The many sets of shutters were moving in contrary motion, each responding to the rises and falls of individual voices in the complex arrangements. Waves of sound ebbed and flowed like the surf on the sandy beach on the other side of the iconic boardwalk, cascades of notes morphed into fanfares, melodies were “soloed out” as if by a platoon of trombones or by four dozen violinists playing pianissimo in unison. This is the very essence of the symphonic organ, its dazzling array of controls allowing the single musician to emulate the actual symphony orchestra.

Sweeping a beach

The Aeolian-Skinner at The Mother Church taught me what is involved in caring for a large organ. “Touching up the reeds” can take all day—there are forty-one of them. But that organ lives in a building with perfect climate control. When you have more than 450 ranks in a building that is also home to rodeos and auto racing, you have a hefty tuning responsibility. Curator Nathan Bryson manages a team of professionals and volunteers who are methodically moving through the organ rebuilding blowers, releathering windchests, refurbishing organ pipes, while maintaining the organ for daily recitals and many special events.

The Boardwalk Hall Organ was built by Midmer-Losh of Merrick, Long Island, New York, during the Great Depression at a cost of over $500,000 and was completed in December of 1932. It is housed in eight chambers: Left Stage, Right Stage, Left Forward, Right Forward, Left Center, Right Center, Left Ceiling, and Right Ceiling. You can see the layout in a photo accompanying this column in the May 2021 issue. Getting a handle on which stops and which divisions are located in which chamber is the first challenge of learning one’s way around the vast instrument. The two Stage Chambers comprise what I perceived to be the main organ. They are huge and jammed with some of the largest organ stops in the world. There are stops on wind pressure of 100 inches on a water column, an absolute hurricane of air.

When the organ blowers are turned on and the instrument fills with wind, windchests expand visibly, as if the doctor told you to “take a deep breath.” The fifteen-foot-long walls of the pressurized room that houses the organ’s main electro-pneumatic switching equipment move so dramatically that I squinted, wondering why the thing does not burst. During renovation, several of the windchests on 100-inch pressure were replaced using more robust engineering, informed by the difficulty of building a wooden vessel to contain such high pressure.

Tuning those gargantuan ranks is a three-person job, one at the console, one in the middle of the hall where it is possible to hear pitches and beats, and the third (with industrial hearing protection and audio headphones) manipulating the pipes. You could try using a starting pistol to signal “next,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear it.

Beyond the endless work of restoring, renovating, tuning, and maintaining this organ, perhaps the most difficult and important work has been reintroducing the city and state governments to the ongoing stewardship of the instrument. A vast auditorium with such an unmusical array of uses seems an unlikely home for a pipe organ, and the people who have been working with and on the organ have been effective ambassadors, sharing the unique qualities of the largest organ in the world. If you would like to help, visit that website and look for the “Donate Now” button.

Look to the future.

After fourteen months at home, it was a joy to be back on the road. My thanks to Didier Grassin of the Noack Organ Company, Ralph Richards, Bruce Fowkes, John Boody, and Nathan Bryson for sharing their work and philosophies with me, and above all, for sharing the joy and pleasure of “knocking around about pipe organs.” Three cheers for all the wonderful work underway on organs both old and new. If this is a taste of the new normal, I am ready to ride.

Notes

^1. Willie Nelson.

^2. By coincidence, one of Wendy’s cousins is on the organ committee at Saint Andrew’s.

^3. In 2010, the Organ Clearing House built the “Blower Room” set for the Saint Bartholomew funeral scene in the spy-thriller movie, Salt, starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Philip Noyce. All the sets including the barge, the presidential bunker, and the CIA offices were constructed in retired Grumman aircraft hangars in Bethpage, New Jersey, where the Lunar Excursion Module was built. Our set included a couple big Spencer blowers that we had in stock and a huge electro-pneumatic switching machine borrowed from the “other” organ at Boardwalk Hall (a four-manual Kimball in the adjacent theater). I transported the machine in both directions in rental trucks. The set decorator thought the rig was complicated enough that I should be present for filming. I stood around while Ms. Jolie jumped through walls dozens of times, until I heard over the PA system, “Organ guy to the crypt, organ guy to the crypt.” The leading lady greeted me with hand outstretched, “Hi, I’m Angie.” I described that she should shoot the regulating chain to make the bellows go haywire and cause the mass cipher that would disrupt the funeral. (We provided the hardware, and special effects provided the action.) She said, “I can’t shoot that.” I replied, “I’ve seen you shoot.” I watched the single take on Mr. Noyce’s monitor and had the honor of shouting “Action!” at his signal, my twelve seconds in Hollywood, another chapter from the life of an itinerant organ guy. Curious? You can stream it on Netflix. And the nice thing about building a movie set? They don’t require a warranty.

Photo caption: Seven keyboards and 1,235 stop tablets, as big as they get. Midmer-Losh organ, Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey. (Manuals I and II have 85 notes, Manual III has 75 notes, and manuals IV, V, VI, and VII have the usual 61.) (photo credit: John Bishop)

Midmer-Losh, Inc., Merrick, Long Island, New York, Opus 5550 (1929–1932); Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey

Where is the largest pipe organ?

If you ask the average person what Atlantic City, New Jersey, is known for, the most likely response would be “gambling.” However, Atlantic City boasts an international treasure that predates the 1976 referendum legalizing gaming in the seaside resort by more than four decades. Tucked within the walls of Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, originally known as the Atlantic City Convention Hall, is an instrument of colossal proportions boasting seven manuals, 449 ranks, and some 33,112 pipes. Built between 1929 and 1932 by the Midmer-Losh Organ Company of Merrick, Long Island, the organ is a monument of music and technology.

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century ushered in a dramatic shift in the art of organbuilding. Electricity brought about daily changes in all aspects of life, and organbuilders were eager to harness its possibilities. No longer bound by the limitations of mechanical or tubular-pneumatic actions, pipes could be located remotely throughout a building or in some extreme cases, other buildings and outdoors! Builders were pioneering their own electric actions, eager to outdo their competitors and build on their own successes. The Hutchings-Votey Organ Company built a sizable instrument for Yale’s Woolsey Hall from 1902 to 1903 that would see great expansion over the next two decades into the superlative instrument we know today. At the same time, the Los Angeles Art Organ Company was building a lavish instrument for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. At the time of its construction, it was the largest pipe organ in the world with more than 10,000 pipes. It would later become the nucleus of the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia, where it has nearly tripled in size.

In the early 20th century, Atlantic City went through a radical building boom, and many of the seaside resort’s cottages and boarding houses were replaced with large hotels. The moderate summer temperatures and ocean breezes brought visitors by the thousands. By the 1920s, tourism was at its peak, causing many historians to deem that era “Atlantic City’s Golden Age.” Prohibition was enacted in 1919 but went largely unenforced in Atlantic City. With many local officials turning a blind eye to the illegal sale and consumption of alcohol, spirits could be readily obtained at restaurants and speakeasies, and the resort’s popularity grew further still. 

In November 1923, Mayor Edward L. Bader initiated a public referendum at which time residents approved the construction of a convention hall. Construction began in August 1926, and the building was officially opened in June 1929. At the time of its construction, the building was the world’s largest auditorium and covered seven acres. The arena, where the Midmer-Losh organ is located, measures 487 feet long, 288 feet wide, and 137 feet high. The barrel-shaped ceiling is supported by the building’s walls rather than pillars, granting an unobstructed view from one end of the room to the other.  In its original configuration, the building was a multi-purpose room that could serve as a convention hall, sports arena, and concert venue. Fixed seating in balconies ran along three of the walls, but the bulk of the seating was in bleachers or moveable chairs on the main floor. When opened the arena could hold more than 40,000 people at full capacity. Following a $90 million renovation in 1999, the capacity of the arena was reduced to just over 14,000 but with greatly improved sight lines and better access and amenities.

One of the key players responsible for the creation of the mammoth organ was a senator by the name of Emerson Lewis Richards. A lawyer and politician by profession, Richards was enthralled by pipe organs from an early age. He was well-traveled, spending a great deal of time in Europe studying historical instruments, and was well acquainted with many of the finest organbuilders and organists of the time. His family’s wealth enabled him to install numerous pipe organs in his palatial home, located only ten blocks from Convention Hall. His home instruments were a laboratory for testing new pipework, and he was notorious for swapping ranks of pipes with some frequency. One of the largest of his residence instruments, Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1047 (four manuals, 146 ranks), was built for the senator in 1944 and moved a few years later in 1948 to First Baptist Church of Denver, Colorado, where it still resides. His vision of the “perfect” pipe organ morphed considerably throughout his life, and his contributions to organbuilding cannot be overstated.

It was Richards who was the champion and mastermind behind the installation of a pipe organ in the Convention Hall. While a pipe organ would not have been uncommon in a civic building of the time, the senator used his influence to convince city officials that it would be more cost effective to spend a large sum of money up front to build an organ and then only need one organist to play it, rather than to hire a large orchestra or band every time live music was needed in the hall. The size of the instrument would have to be enormous to fill the space and lead 40,000 people in song.

Richards’s initial design called for an astonishing 592 ranks and 43,641 pipes. Space and budget constraints mercifully intervened, and the revised scheme was reduced to 403 ranks and 29,646 pipes. By the time construction was complete, the instrument grew to its present 449 ranks and 33,112 pipes. The twenty divisions of the organ are located in eight chambers at the front and center of the room. W. W. Kimball, M. P. Möller, and Midmer-Losh submitted bids for the contract. Kimball’s price was the highest at $467,617. Möller came in lower at $418,850, and the lowest bid of $347,200 came from Midmer-Losh. All of the bids were still over the $300,000 budget established by the city, but Richards pointed out that if the instrument was to fit the budget exactly, it would have to be smaller than what was, at the time, the largest organ—the Wanamaker organ in nearby Philadelphia. The fact that the city provided the extra money suggests that perhaps having the world’s largest organ was indeed part of Atlantic City’s agenda. Ultimately, Richards was able to insert a clause into the contract, which the builder accepted; it gave him the power as the architect of the organ to make any change to the contract at any time with the builder bearing the cost. Richards invoked the clause on numerous occasions with devastating financial results for the Midmer-Losh company.

Construction on the organ, Midmer-Losh’s Opus 5550, began in May 1929 and was completed in December 1932. The first two divisions to be played were the Brass Chorus and String II on July 28, 1929. They were played from a used three-manual Möller theatre organ console. As construction continued the instrument was played from the five-manual “portable” console until the seven-manual console was completed. James Winter, an electrician for Midmer-Losh, gave the first public recital on May 11, 1932, during the Atlantic City Fair.

The contract for the organ was signed only a few months before the Great Depression began, but the money for the organ was not affected and construction continued. In fact, in some ways, the Great Depression may have contributed to the success of the instrument. While other organbuilding firms were downsizing or ceasing operation altogether, there was plentiful work in Atlantic City and many of the best and brightest minds in organbuilding were associated with the project. Employees from Estey, Steere, Odell, Marr & Colton, Dennison, Gottfried, and Wurlitzer all found their way to Atlantic City, and their contributions can be seen and heard throughout the instrument. In the end, however, the project was not exempt from the financial struggles of the Depression, which led to the Midmer-Losh company and Atlantic City to be in conflict over the completion of the instrument.

The contentious end to the construction of the instrument was perhaps a foreshadowing of its future. Following the official completion of the organ, signed on December 5, 1932, the Midmer-Losh company was required for one year to keep two men at the job to carry out maintenance and, in effect, continue the tonal regulation that would have otherwise been completed during the actual construction period. One of the men tasked with this assignment was Roscoe Evans, who would remain in Atlantic City and become the organ’s first curator. His greatest challenge was the combination action for the seven-manual console. The complex machinery to control 1,235 stop tabs and 240 pistons was located in two rooms in the basement below the stage. The combination of delicate metal traces and machinery contained in wooden boxes proved a disastrous pairing, especially with a steam line running through one of the rooms! The combination action was so troublesome that it was decommissioned after only two years. The great Atlantic hurricane that struck the island in 1944 inundated the basement levels of the hall with 15 million gallons of seawater, permanently damaging the combination action and requiring extensive repair to the blowers and their motors.

Evans retired in the early 1950s, and his successor was William Rosser. Rosser continued the daunting effort of single-handedly trying to keep the largest pipe organ in the world playing. The organ was used for the 1964 Democratic National Convention held at the Hall, but by that time the instrument was already exhibiting problems. By 1962, the Gallery I reeds were no longer being used. There may have been other portions that were unplayable or only marginally playable by then as well. While there is considerable documentation from Evans’s tenure, there are no records from Rosser’s time. A stipulation for holding the 1964 convention in Atlantic City was the installation of air conditioning. While no doubt enjoyed by convention attendees and many others in the following years, leaks from condensate pans caused significant problems and plunged more of the instrument into silence. Dennis McGurk joined Rosser as his assistant in 1959. While he had no background in organbuilding, he was a quick learner and in 1984 succeeded Rosser as the third curator of organs. McGurk recalled, “Pretty much all of the organ was working when I arrived in 1959. Since that time, however, it has slowly but surely gone downhill. Roof leaks in the ’70s caused most of the damage in the two upper chambers, and the simple fact of the matter is that the authorities had little interest in spending money on repairs at a time when the City as a whole was in decline.” McGurk had the unenviable and discouraging task of keeping what little of the organ he could playable with limited budget and materials. But, perhaps his greatest contribution was keeping those who wished to simply discard the instrument at bay, thus preserving it for future restoration. McGurk retired at the end of 1998. Prior to his retirement, the Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ Society was formed to raise awareness of the instrument and begin the process of fundraising for its restoration. This group was instrumental in protecting the instrument during the 1998 building renovation and furthering McGurk’s advocation that the instrument be saved and not relegated to the scrap pile.

My first visit to Atlantic City was in the winter of 2007. At that time, the organ could not be played from the console, but that did little to dampen my excitement. The sheer size of the room, the scaling of the pipework, and seemingly endless chambers were enough of a sensory overload for a first visit. The downside to the visit was the confirmation of my study of and readings concerning the condition of the organ and the sad state of affairs of the instrument. Thankfully by that time, there was a glimmer of hope as Carl Loeser, the fourth curator of organs, was leading his staff and volunteers to mitigate the worst of the damage and prevent further destruction or loss.

Fast forward to September 1, 2015, when I began my tenure as the fifth curator of organs. The Midmer-Losh was basically a large two-manual instrument with about 25% functionality. Only the Right Stage chamber was working, with the Great, Solo, and Solo-Great divisions playing from their respective keyboards with limited sub and super coupling available to other manuals. Expression was negligible, and the shades were more for visual effect, flapping earnestly for the audience to see, but doing little to change the actual volume or timbre of the sound emanating from the chamber. Making music was a challenge at best, and subtlety and nuance were almost totally elusive. By 2015, much restoration work had already been done to the Swell division in the Left Stage chamber, but much more work in the chamber needed to be completed before pipework could be returned to the Swell chests. The other divisions in the Left Stage chamber—Swell-Choir, Unenclosed Choir, and String I—all must be accessed through the Swell, and to have put in even a few ranks in the Swell would have been far too risky. Work began in earnest to remove pipework and chests for restoration. The Swell-Choir manual windchests were sent to Columbia Organ Leathers of Columbia, Pennsylvania, for restoration, while the offset chests, tremulants, and regulators were completed in-house. Fifty-eight ranks of pipes were sent to Oyster Pipe Works of Louisville, Ohio, for restoration and repair.

On-site work at Boardwalk Hall is accomplished by a staff of six; four are full-time and two are part-time. We are assisted in our efforts by a significant group of dedicated volunteers. While this may seem like a large number by today’s standards, at the height of construction the Midmer-Losh company employed more than sixty! An early aid was a work symposium co-sponsored by the American Institute of Organbuilders and the Historic Organ Restoration Committee (the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization now overseeing the restoration of the pipe organs at Boardwalk Hall). The symposium was held in February 2016 and brought fifteen organbuilders from across the country to join the staff and volunteers at Boardwalk Hall. During that symposium, we focused on the restoration and releathering of much of the Pedal Left chest work. These efforts combined with the work completed in the Unenclosed Choir and String I allowed those divisions to be played publicly for the first time in decades during the Organ Historical Society convention on July 1, 2016.

The Swell division is the powerhouse of the Left Stage chamber, boasting 55 ranks, twenty of which are mixtures. While most Swell divisions are usually based on a 16′ string or stopped flute, the chorus here is based on a 16′ Double Diapason. The diapason chorus continues with two 8′ diapasons and extends logically upwards to the lower-pitched Furniture V, the spicy Cymbal VIII, and finally the Plein Jeu VII for brilliance and sparkle. The Harmonic Flute 8′ and its Celeste are the softest stops in the division and are hauntingly beautiful. Three pairs of celestes provide lushness, and unison strings at 16′, 8′, and 4′ provide additional clarity. Two reed choruses on 15 inches and 30 inches crown the ensemble. The lower-pressure chorus is based on the chocolatey Double Horn 16′ and is a darker and more noble chorus. The high-pressure chorus adds fire and gravity to the full ensemble with the Field Trumpet 8′ blazing through for a final punch. Perhaps the most unique reed in the Swell division is the Muted Trumpet 8′. Its 3/4-length, thin-scaled resonators remind one of an orchestral oboe. While its tone is quite lovely alone, it is perhaps most useful in coloring other stops, and its application opens up a wealth of solo possibilities.

On paper, the Swell division is curiously devoid of mutations, particularly given its large number of ranks! The answer lies immediately adjacent to the Swell. The appropriately named Swell-Choir division is meant to supplement both the Swell and Choir divisions with the entirety of its resources playable independently from both the Swell and Choir keyboards. This division provides color reeds, softer flues, and an extensive array of mutations. Independently expressive from the Swell, the division contains 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th mutations. Their use is further enhanced through unification providing pitches from 62⁄5′ all the way up to 1⁄4′. Also available in the Swell-Choir are a clarinet, oboe, and vox humana, all available at 16′, 8′, and 4′. A trio of gemshorns, one celeste tuned sharp and the other flat, further expand the utility of this division. Also in the Left Stage chamber is the String I division. Twenty ranks of strings all voiced on 25 inches of wind provide unmistakably powerful beauty. Housed within its own expression box, the String I division rounds out the immense expressive capabilities of the Left Stage chamber.

While the vast majority of the Left Stage chamber’s resources are enclosed, the loudest and softest voices are unenclosed. The Unenclosed Choir is voiced on 33⁄4 inches, the lowest pressure in the organ, and was a significant forerunner of the organ reform movement. By contrast, the Grand Choir division is the upward extension of the Pedal Left voices and boasts pipework voiced on 20 inches to 50 inches. In the Pedal Left division, the Bombarde 32′ has wooden resonators for the 32′ and 16′ octaves giving it a darker, heavier bass. Shallot construction changes no fewer than three times throughout the compass, and metal construction from 8′ C up with harmonic and double harmonic length resonators gives this voice powerful treble ascendency and allows it to bloom into a powerful solo voice in the upper register. The Major Posaune 16′ is voiced on 50 inches and is a staggeringly powerful voice reminiscent of a trombone playing fff. Finally, the Fagotto 32′ with its smaller resonators and relatively lower pressure of 20 inches finds great use under softer ensembles and is equally at home undergirding a full string ensemble.

By the latter half of 2018, the restoration work in the Left Stage chamber was largely complete, and we were able to turn some of our attention back to the Right Stage chamber. The Right Stage chamber has always been considered the “show chamber” due to its immediate proximity to the organ shop and curator’s office. Even during the darkest days of Dennis McGurk’s tenure when he was forced to shut off large portions of the instrument, he was able to continue to maintain and care for this chamber. The timing was fortuitous as another convention was looming: the Mid-Atlantic regional convention of the American Guild of Organists was to be held on July 3, 2019. While the chamber had been playing regularly since 2013, it was still riddled with dead notes and problematic issues. Carl Loeser completed considerable work in 2013 and 2014, releathering the three large pitman chests in the Solo division. This made it the most reliable of the divisions in the Right Stage chamber. Several of the lower and more accessible windchests in the Great division had also been releathered under the supervision of Dennis McGurk. To best utilize time and materials, we took on the task of releathering and repairing chests with the loudest and most important stops in the Great. The 30-inch-pressure windchest containing the First and Second 8′ Open Diapasons and Rausch Quint II was taken out of the chamber and completely restored. Two levels above it, the chest holding the Furniture VI was repaired in place. The Grand Great chests, the upward extensions of the Pedal Right stops, were also taken out of the chamber for complete restoration with new leather, gasketing, and magnets. A systematic process of rebuilding all of the pedal primaries has eliminated the vast majority of the irritating dead notes in the pedal.

The Great division boasts an incredible ten 8′ diapasons, each with its own character through the use of various construction techniques and pressures. These ten 8′s are undergirded by a 32′ Sub Principal and three 16′ Double Diapasons. Continuing up the chorus, you will find no fewer than five 4′ Octaves and three 2′ Fifteenths. An eleven-rank Grand Cornet, five-rank Major Sesquialtera, and two mixtures serve to complete the chorus. In a letter dated April 11, 1932, Senator Richards wrote to Henry Willis, III, saying “When the whole chorus is on from 32′ up to Mixtures, even the 50-inch reeds have no chance with it in power and brilliance. A demonstration that reeds are unnecessary except for a change in color.” Indeed, the Great reed chorus is quite small considering the size of the division, with only three trumpets at 16′, 8′, and 4′ pitches, albeit playing on 30 inches of wind.

The Solo division stands its own ground with a powerful Stentor Diapason 8′, Octave 4′, and Grand Chorus IX mixture; the division includes two sets of celestes and a complete flute chorus including the soaring Tibia Rex. The division’s real claim to fame, however, is its brilliant reed chorus. With pressures ranging from 30 inches to 100 inches, the chorus includes a softer Trumpet Profunda playing at 16′, 8′, and 4′, frequently used as a chorus reed. By contrast the Tuba Magna, also 16′, 8′, and 4′, plays on 50 inches and has a powerful, clear tone. Providing blazing clarity is the brass Bugle 8′, also on 50 inches. Finally, the whole ensemble is crowned by the Tuba Imperial, voiced by Roscoe Evans and playing on 100 inches of wind. Where the Solo division excels in sheer power, the neighboring Solo-Great division shines through with subtlety and color. Divided into separately expressible flue and reed ensembles, the Solo-Great is similar in concept to the Swell-Choir division in the Left Stage chamber. Like the Swell-Choir, the Solo-Great has a wealth of mutations from 102⁄3′ to 1⁄4′, two sets of softer celestes, and delicate flutes.  Eleven ranks of color reeds, six extended down to 16′, provide a wide array of solo choices.

Where the Pedal Left division is predominately darker in order to support the expressive divisions above it, the Pedal Right division must stand up to the bold choruses in the Great and Solo divisions. The 32′ Tibia is colossal in scale, and more than a few pipes in the 32′ octave have been repaired by crawling in the mouth and standing upright in the pipe. The 32′ Bombardon is voiced on 40 inches of wind and has metal resonators, the lowest of which is 24 inches in diameter. The Diaphone Phonon 16′ on 50 inches is unmistakable in its power from practically anywhere in the building. Perhaps the most notorious stop on the Midmer-Losh organ is the loudest organ stop in the world: the Grand Ophicleide. Voiced on 100 inches of wind, it is actually a pedal stop that is extended up to 85 notes to allow it to play on the seven-octave Great keyboard. In the Pedal, the stop plays at 16′ and gives an unrelenting power to the pedal line, while in the manuals its sheer power and tone cut through even the largest of registrations with ferocious clout. When a chord is released its tone seems to reverberate in the cavernous hall, long after the rest of the organ’s sound has died away. The 64′ Dulzian, one of only two real 64′ stops in the world, gives a final dramatic punch when a 32′ just won’t do! 

A continuing project since 2017 has been the restoration of the Choir division. Located in the Left Forward chamber, this is the first of the Gallery level chambers that we have addressed. Funding already in place from a settlement following damage to the winding and relay for this chamber during the 1999–2000 renovation of the building made this the most logical and financially feasible chamber to begin with (outside of the two main chambers). The Choir division is no diminutive organ, boasting 37 ranks. It has a wealth of undulating stops, complete diapason chorus, orchestral and high-pressure reeds, and multiple open 16′ stops. Restoration is now approximately 50% complete with all of the offset chests, tremulants, and four of the six large pitman chests completed. Flue pipe restoration has been completed in house or by A. R. Schopp’s Sons of Alliance, Ohio, who restored the badly damaged Dulciana, Dulciana Celeste, and Acuta VI. Along with other projects in the shop, work will continue on this chamber as time permits.

Perhaps the most significant musical turning point for the Midmer-Losh organ in modern times has been the installation of a new combination action. While it was a technological marvel of its time, its complexity and installation in a difficult environment prevented it from ever working properly. The initial plan had been to restore the movable five-manual console first and the larger seven-manual console at a later date. However, as more and more of the instrument was brought online, it became clear that not having a functioning combination action was a major hindrance. After many months of tracing cables and intensive study, we determined that a portion of the existing system in the seven-manual console could be put to use again. The existing tablets and their magnets were in good working order, and the boxes containing the mechanical components for the system in the basement made for a logical and accessible location to tie new wiring into the system. The piston rails from each of the seven keyboards were taken off and rewired, allowing all the thumb and toe pistons to be used. While it is a departure from our desire to restore the organ to its original state, the incorporation of a modern multilevel combination action has proven remarkably beneficial, and organists are now able to showcase the instrument as it was intended.

With the completion of the Left Stage chamber and the extensive repairs completed in the Right Stage chamber, the organ is now a reliable and manageable instrument. We have turned the corner from simply having a large collection of pipes to hearing a beautiful and truly musical instrument. At the time of this writing, 238 of the 449 ranks are playing—53% of the organ—all in only two of the eight chambers! With each rank brought online and the instrument becoming a more cohesive whole, the brilliance of the organ’s designer and architect, Senator Emerson Richards, becomes ever more apparent. New and exciting projects are already on the horizon as we work to restore the first of the ranks in the Center chambers. Both of the 100-inch reeds in Gallery I will soon come online as we work to bring more sound to the center of the room. Upon the completion of the Choir division, we will move to the Gallery I and II divisions, across to Gallery III and IV, and finally to the String II and Brass Chorus, completing the work on the Gallery level divisions before we undertake the herculean task of restoring the Echo and Fanfare organs in the ceiling of Boardwalk Hall.

Not to be forgotten is the magnificent W. W. Kimball pipe organ located in the Adrian Phillips Theater, adjacent to the main arena where the Midmer-Losh organ resides. In any other setting, this organ would be the showcase instrument with four manuals and 55 ranks, but it is often overshadowed by its larger neighbor. The Kimball organ is largely playable and restored thanks to efforts by previous curator Carl Loeser who had the console restored by the Crome Organ Company. Through the generosity of the American Theatre Organ Society, a pair of grants were awarded to HORC to complete the releathering of chests in the Main (left stage) and Solo (right stage) divisions and to restore the Brass Trumpet, a unique example of this stop in a Kimball organ. 

Both pipe organs at Boardwalk Hall have now returned to regular use and are a significant part of the life and events here. Recitals are enjoyed every week year-round on Wednesdays at noon and every weekday during the summer season from Memorial Day through Labor Day. In 2019, we welcomed 1,688 visitors for the Curator’s tour, 1,249 for the brief tour, and 4,093 visitors for the noon recitals. Through creative collaboration with the management of Boardwalk Hall, we are able to offer the organ for use to a multitude of events. The Midmer-Losh has been requested to play the prelude to a rodeo as well as for wrestling championships, numerous graduation ceremonies, and Miss America pageants. Likewise, the Kimball organ sees regular use for award ceremonies, banquets, and religious gatherings in the Theater. We look forward to bringing more of the instruments back online and furthering their outreach to the Atlantic City community and the world!

—Nathan L. Bryson, Curator of Pipe Organs at Boardwalk Hall

Cover photo credt: Michael Sluzenski.

PEDAL RIGHT

64′ Diaphone 

32′ Sub Principal

32′ Contra Tibia 97 pipes

21-1⁄3′ Tibia Quint 

16′ Diaphone Phonon (50′′) 39 pipes

16′ Diapason

16′ Principal 109 pipes

16′ Diapason 

16′ Geigen Principal

16′ Tibia Major 85 pipes

16′ Grand Bourdon

16′ Major Flute

16′ Wald Flute

16′ Tibia Clausa

16′ Viol 85 pipes

12-4⁄5′ Gross Tierce 68 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Diaphone Quint (50′′)

10-2⁄3′ Tibia Quint

10-2⁄3′ Tibia Quint

10-2⁄3′ Principal Quint

10-2⁄3′ Minor Quint

9-1⁄7′ Septieme 68 pipes

8′ Octave Principal

8′ Octave Major

8′ Octave Diapason

8′ Octave Geigen

8′ Gross Gemshorn

8′ Tibia Major

8′ Tibia Clausa

8′ Doppel Gedeckt

8′ Octave Viol

6-2⁄5′ Gross Tierce

5-1⁄3′ Tibia Quint

5-1⁄3′ Principal Quint

5-1⁄3′ Tibia Quint

4-4⁄7′ Gross Septieme

4′ Super Octave

4′ Super Octave

4′ Tibia Fifteenth

4′ Flute Fifteenth

4′ Viol Fifteenth

3-1⁄5′ Tierce

2-2⁄3′ Flute Nineteenth

2-2⁄3′ Tibia Major Nineteenth

2-2⁄3′ Viol Nineteenth

2-2⁄7′ Septieme

2′ Tibia Twenty-Second

2′ Flageolet

1-3⁄5′ Octave Tierce

1-1⁄3′ Tibia Twenty-Sixth

1-1⁄7′ Octave Septieme

1′ Flute Twenty-Ninth

Mixture

64′ Dulzian 85 pipes

42-2⁄3′ Contra Dulzquint

32′ Contra Bombardon 85 pipes

32′ Contra Dulzian

21-1⁄3′ Dulzian Quint

16′ Grand Ophicleide (100′′) 85 pipes

16′ Tuba Magna (50′′)

16′ Bombardon

16′ Trumpet Profunda

16′ Dulzian

16′ Trumpet 97 pipes

16′ Saxophone

16′ Krummhorn

16′ Oboe Horn

16′ English Horn

16′ French Horn

16′ Vox Baryton

10-2⁄3′ Bombard Quint

10-2⁄3′ Dulzian Quint

8′ Ophicleide (100′′)

8′ Octave Bombardon

8′ Octave Dulzian

8′ Bugle (50′′)

8′ Trumpet

8′ Octave Krummhorn

8′ Vox Baryton

5-1⁄3′ Trumpet Quint

5-1⁄3′ Bombardon Quint

4′ Dulzian Fifteenth

4′ Trumpet Fifteenth

Reed Mixture V

Brass Chorus (floating)

Pedal Divide

PEDAL LEFT

32′ Diaphone (50′′) 97 pipes

32′ Diapason 97 pipes

16′ Diaphone (50′′)

16′ Major Diapason 32 pipes

16′ Diaphone 85 pipes

16′ Diapason

16′ Diapason

16′ Tibia Clausa 85 pipes

16′ Doppel Gedeckt

16′ Stopped Diapason

16′ Bass Viol 85 pipes

16′ Bass Viol

16′ Bass Gamba

16′ Cone Gamba

10-2⁄3′ Quint Diapason

10-2⁄3′ Stopped Quint

10-2⁄3′ Cone Quint

8′ Octave Gemshorn

8′ Octave Diaphone (50′′)

8′ Octave Diapason

8′ Octave Phonon

8′ Gross Flute

8′ Flute Clarabella

8′ Cello

6-2⁄5′ Terz

5-1⁄3′ Twelfth

4-4⁄7′ Octave Septieme

4′ Fife (50′′)

4′ Super Octave

4′ Gemshorn Fifteenth

4′ Flute Fifteenth

3-1⁄5′ Tierce

2-2⁄3′ Nineteenth

2-2⁄7′ Twenty-First

2′ Gemshorn Twenty-Second

2′ Twenty-Second

2′ Fife

1′ Twenty-Ninth

Stentor Sesquialtera VII 224 pipes

Grave Mixture VI

32′ Contra Bombard (50′′) 97 pipes

32′ Fagotto 109 pipes

16′ Major Posaune (50′′) 44 pipes

16′ Bombard (50′′)

16′ Trumpet

16′ Horn

16′ Bass Clarinet

16′ Fagotto

16′ Oboe

16′ Vox Humana

8′ Major Posaune (50′′)

8′ Octave Bombard (50′′)

8′ Octave Clarinet

8′ Octave Fagotto

8′ Octave Oboe

5-1⁄3′ Horn Twelfth

4′ Bombard Fifteenth

4′ Oboe Fifteenth

4′ Horn Fifteenth

2-2⁄3′ Horn Nineteenth

2′ Fagotto Twenty-Second

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

PEDAL RIGHT GALLERY

32′ Contra Violone

16′ Diaphone

16′ Flute Maggiorre

16′ Flute Bourdon

16′ Spire Flute

16′ Contra Bass

16′ Contra Viol

16′ Double Bass

16′ Contra Viol

16′ Contra Gamba

10-2⁄3′ Flute Quint

8′ Cone Flute

8′ Viol 

4′ Viol

16′ Trumpet Sonora (100′′)

16′ Tuba D’Amour

16′ Chalumeau

16′ Contra Bassoon

16′ Vox Baryton

8′ Bassoon

PEDAL LEFT GALLERY

16′ Grand Diapason

16′ Dulciana

16′ Major Flute

16′ Double Melodia

8′ Melodia Flute

32′ Contra Trombone

16′ Posaune (50′′)

16′ Bombardon

16′ Trombone

16′ Trombone

16′ Saxophone

10-2⁄3′ Tromba Quint

8′ Trombone

8′ Tromba

6-2⁄5′ Tromba Tierce

5-1⁄3′ Tromba Quint

3-1⁄5′ Tromba Seventeenth

PEDAL PERCUSSION

Cymbal

Persian Cymbal

Snare Drum Roll

Snare Drum Roll

Snare Drum Strike

FF Bass Drum Strike

FF Bass Drum Roll

FF Contra Drum Roll

FF Contra Drum Strike

Persian Cymbal

Persian Cymbal

Chinese Gong Roll

Chinese Gong Strike

Cymbal

Snare Drum Roll

Snare Drum Roll

Bass Drum Roll

Bass Drum Strike

Bass Drum Roll

Bass Drum Strike

Bass Drum Roll

Bass Drum Strike

FF Contra Drum Roll

FF Contra Drum Strike

MP Contra Drum Roll

Bass Drum Strike

16′ Piano

8′ Piano

Chimes

PEDAL SECOND TOUCH

64′ Dulzian Diaphone

32′ Diaphone (50′′)

16′ Diaphone

16′ Tibia Major

16′ Contra Viol

8′ Tibia Major

8′ Viol

4′ Tibia

4′ Viola

64′ Dulzian

32′ Contra Bombard (50′′)

32′ Contra Bombardon

16′ Ophicleide (100′′)

16′ Posaune

16′ Bombard (50′′)

16′ Bombardon

8′ Octave Ophicleide (100′′)

8′ Posaune (50′′)

8′ Bombardon

8′ Dulzian

4′ Bombard (50′′)

4′ Dulzian

Chimes

Brass Chorus (floating)

Fanfare (floating)

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

Gallery Reeds I (floating)

Gallery Diapasons III (floating)

SWELL-CHOIR (Manual III)

16′ Gross Gedeckt 97 pipes

16′ Stopped Diapason 104 pipes

16′ Cone Gamba 97 pipes

8′ Gemshorn 97 pipes

8′ Gemshorn Celeste 97 pipes

8′ Gemshorn Celeste 97 pipes

8′ Dopple Gedeckt 

8′ Dopple Spitz Flute 97 pipes

8′ Clarabella 92 pipes

8′ Stopped Diapason

8′ Muted Gamba

6-2⁄5′ Terz 97 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Major Fifth 97 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Gamba Quint 

5-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Quint

4-4⁄7′ Septieme 97 pipes

4′ Octave Gemshorn

4′ Spitz Flute

4′ Clarabella

4′ Dopple Flute

4′ Stopped Flute

4′ Zauber Flute 97 pipes

4′ Cone Flute

3-5⁄9′ Ninth 85 pipes

3-1⁄5′ Major Tenth 

3-1⁄5′ Gemshorn Tenth 

2-10⁄11′ Eleventh 85 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Gemshorn Twelfth 

2-2⁄3′ Twelfth  

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth 

2-2⁄3′ Stopped Flute Twelfth 

2-2⁄7′ Octave Septieme 

2′ Gemshorn Fifteenth 

2′ Gedeckt Fifteenth  

2′ Magic Flute

1-7⁄9′ Sixteenth

1-3⁄5′ Major Seventeenth 

1-3⁄5′ Gemshorn Seventeenth 

1-5⁄11′ Eighteenth 

1-1⁄3′ Major Nineteenth 

1-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Ninteenth 

1-1⁄7′ Twenty-First

1′ Twenty-Second

1′ Zauber Flute Twenty-Second 

8⁄9′ Twenty-Third

4⁄5′ Twenty-Fourth

8⁄11′ Twenty-Fifth

2⁄3′ Twenty-Sixth

1⁄2′ Twenty-Ninth

1⁄3′ Thirty-Third

1⁄4′ Thirty-Sixth

32′ Fagotto

16′ Contra Oboe 85 pipes

16′ Bass Clarinet 97 pipes

16′ Bass Vox Humana 97 pipes

8′ Oboe

8′ Clarinet

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Octave Oboe

4′ Octave Clarinet

4′ Vox Humana

8′ Marimba Repeat

8′ Marimba Stroke 61 bars

4′ Marimba Repeat

4′ Marimba Stroke

4′ Glockenspiel Single 49 bars

4′ Glockenspiel Repeat

2′ Glockenspiel Single

SWELL (Manual III)

16′ Double Diapason 104 pipes

16′ Contra Gamba 104 pipes

8′ Diapason 80 pipes

8′ Diapason 80 pipes

8′ Waldhorn 80 pipes

8′ Tibia Plena 80 pipes

8′ Hohl Flute 80 pipes

8′ Gross Gedeckt 80 pipes

8′ Harmonic Flute 80 pipes

8′ Harmonic Flute Celeste 80 pipes

8′ Gamba 80 pipes

8′ Gamba Celeste 80 pipes

8′ Violin 80 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste I (2 ranks) 148 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste II (2 ranks) 148 pipes

4′ Ocarina 80 pipes

4′ Octave 80 pipes

4′ Octave

4′ Traverse Flute 80 pipes

4′ Silver Flute 80 pipes

4′ Viol Salicet

4′ Viol Gambette 80 pipes

2′ Fifteenth 80 pipes

2′ Orchestral Piccolo 80 pipes

Plein Jeu VII 560 pipes

Cymbal VIII 640 pipes

Furniture V 400 pipes

16′ Double Trumpet 104 pipes

16′ Double Horn 104 pipes

8′ Harmonic Trumpet 80 pipes

8′ Field Trumpet 80 pipes

8′ Posaune 80 pipes

8′ Cornopean 80 pipes

8′ Muted Trumpet 80 pipes

8′ Flugel Horn 80 pipes

8′ Krummhorn 80 pipes

8′ Vox Humana 80 pipes

4′ Trumpet Clarion 80 pipes

4′ Trumpet Clarion

4′ Octave Horn

Brass Chorus (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

FANFARE (Manual V)

16′ Major Flute 85 pipes

8′ Stentor Diapason (fr. Stentor VII)

8′ Stentorphone 61 pipes

8′ Stentor Flute 61 pipes

8′ Pileata Magna 61 pipes

8′ Gamba Tuba 61 pipes

8′ Gamba Tuba Celeste 61 pipes

4′ Stentor Octave (fr. Stentor VII)

4′ Major Flute

4′ Flute Octaviante 61 pipes

4′ Gamba Clarion 61 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Twelfth Recorder 61 pipes

2′ Fife 61 pipes

Stentor VII 427 pipes

Cymbal V 305 pipes

Harmonic Mixture VI 366 pipes

16′ Contra Posaune (50′′) 85 pipes

16′ Contra Bombardon 97 pipes

16′ Contra Trombone 97 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Tromba Quint 85 pipes

8′ Harmonic Tuba (50′′) 73 pipes

4′ Tuba Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Ophicleide (50′′) 61 pipes

8′ Posaune (50′′)

8′ Bombard

8′ Tromba

8′ Trombone

6-2⁄5′ Tromba Tierce 73 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Tromba Fifth

5-1⁄3′ Trombone Fifth

4′ Harmonic Clarion (50′′)

4′ Major Clarion (50′′) 61 pipes

4′ Octave Posaune (50′′)

4′ Clarion

4′ Trombone Clarion

3-1⁄5′ Tromba Tenth

2-2⁄3′ Tromba Twelfth

2′ Clarine Fifteenth

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

GALLERY I (floating)

16′ Contra Diaphone 85 pipes

8′ Diaphone

8′ Diapason (fr. Mixture Mirabilis VII)

4′ Octave (fr. Mixture Mirabilis VII)

Mixture Mirabilis VII 511 pipes

16′ Trumpet Mirabilis (100′′) 85 pipes

16′ Trumpet Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Tuba Maxima (100′′) 73 pipes

8′ Trumpet Imperial (100′′)

4′ Clarion Mirabilis (100′′)

4′ Clarion Melody (melody coupler)

4′ Clarion Real (100′′)

GALLERY II (floating)

16′ Flute Maggiore 97 pipes

8′ Jubal Flute 73 pipes

4′ Jubal Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Harmonic Flute 73 pipes

4′ Melodic Flute

4′ Harmonic Flute 73 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Harmonic Twelfth 61 pipes

2′ Harmonic Piccolo 61 pipes

Harmonic Mixture III 183 pipes

GALLERY III (floating)

16′ Contra Diapason 97 pipes

8′ Diapason I 73 pipes

8′ Diapason II 73 pipes

4′ Octave I 73 pipes

4′ Octave II

2′ Fifteenth 73 pipes

Mixture IV 292 pipes

16′ Grand Piano 

8′ Grand Piano 

4′ Grand Piano

GALLERY IV (floating)

16′ Contra Saxophone 85 pipes

8′ Brass Trumpet 73 pipes

8′ Egyptian Horn 73 pipes

8′ Euphone 73 pipes

8′ Major Clarinet 73 pipes

8′ Major Oboe 73 pipes

8′ Musette Mirabilis 73 pipes

8′ Cor D’Orchestre 73 pipes

8′ Saxophone

4′ Octave Saxophone

STRING I (floating)

16′ Contra Basso 97 pipes

8′ Cello 73 pipes

8′ Cello Celeste I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Cello Celeste II (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Violins I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Violins II (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Violins III (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Violins IV (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Viol Secundo I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Viol Secundo II (2 ranks) 134 pipes

4′ Octave Viola

4′ Viol Secundo (2 ranks) 146 pipes

16′ String Melody (melody coupler)

4′ String Melody (melody coupler)

String Pizzicato

STRING II (floating)

16′ Double Bass 97 pipes

16′ Contra Bass 97 pipes

16′ Contra Viol 97 pipes

8′ Viola Diapason 73 pipes

8′ Viol Cello 73 pipes

8′ Cello Phonon 73 pipes

8′ Cello 73 pipes

8′ Cello Celeste (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Viola Phonon 73 pipes

8′ Viola Celeste (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Violin Phonon 73 pipes

8′ Violin 73 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste II (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste III (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste IV (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Viol Celeste V (2 ranks) 134 pipes

4′ Viol Principal 73 pipes

4′ Violin (2 ranks) 146 pipes

4′ Viola (2 ranks) 146 pipes

4′ Octave Cello I

4′ Octave Cello II

4′ Octave Violin

5-1⁄3′ Quint Flute 78 pipes

4′ Stopped Flute

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth 73 pipes

2′ Piccolo

String Mixture V 305 pipes

8′ Tromba D’Amour 73 pipes

16′ String II Melody (melody coupler)

4′ String II Melody (melody coupler)

String II Pizzicato

STRING III (floating)

8′ Cello Celeste I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Cello Celeste II (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Viola Celeste (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Violins I (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Violins II (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Violins III (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Violins IV (2 ranks) 134 pipes

8′ Viol Secundo (2 ranks) 146 pipes

8′ Cor Anglais 73 pipes

16′ Grand Piano

8′ Grand Piano

4′ Grand Piano

UNENCLOSED CHOIR (Manual I)

16′ Quintaton 73 pipes

8′ Diapason 73 pipes

8′ Holz Flute 73 pipes

4′ Octave 73 pipes

2′ Fifteenth 73 pipes

Rausch Quint II 146 pipes

Mixture II 146 pipes

CHOIR (Manual I)

16′ Contra Melodia 109 pipes

16′ Contra Dulciana 92 pipes

8′ Diapason 73 pipes

8′ Diapason 73 pipes

8′ Gemshorn 73 pipes

8′ Gemshorn Celeste 73 pipes

8′ Dulciana

8′ Dulciana Celeste 73 pipes

8′ Philomela 73 pipes

8′ Melodia

8′ Concert Flute 73 pipes

8′ Unda Maris 73 pipes

8′ Nachthorn 73 pipes

8′ Viola Pomposa 73 pipes

8′ Viola Celeste 73 pipes

8′ Voix Celeste II 134 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Dulzquint

4′ Fugara 73 pipes

4′ Dolce 85 pipes

4′ Spindle Flute 73 pipes

4′ Flute Overte 73 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Melodia Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Dulzard

2′ Flageolet 73 pipes

2′ Melodia

2′ Dulcett

1-1⁄3′ Dulce

1′ Dulcinett

Acuta VI 438 pipes

Flute Mixture III 219 pipes

Brass Chorus (floating)

16′ Contra Tromba 97 pipes

8′ Tromba Real 73 pipes

8′ Brass Cornet 73 pipes

8′ French Horn 73 pipes

8′ Clarinet 73 pipes

8′ Bassett Horn 73 pipes

8′ Cor Anglais 73 pipes

8′ Kinura 73 pipes

4′ Tromba Clarion

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

GRAND CHOIR (Manual I)

16′ Diaphone (50′′)

16′ Diapahone Melody (coupler)

8′ Diaphone (50′′)

8′ Diapason

8′ Diaphonic Diapason

8′ Tibia Clausa

8′ Viol Cello

16′ Bombard (50′′)

16′ Fagotto

8′ Posaune

8′ Bombard (50′′)

4′ Bombard Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Chalumeau

4′ Octave Oboe

CHOIR SECOND TOUCH (Manual I)

16′ Double Bass

16′ Contra Bass

16′ Contra Viol

8′ Viola

8′ Viol Cello

8′ Viol Cello

4′ Viol Cello

4′ Viol Cello

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Fanfare (coupler)

CHOIR-SWELL (Manual I)

16′ Doppel Gedeckt

16′ Stopped Diapason

16′ Cone Gamba

8′ Doppel Gedeckt

8′ Stopped Flute

8′ Clarabella

8′ Spitz Flute

8′ Gemshorn

8′ Gemshorn Celeste I

8′ Gemshorn Celeste II

8′ Muted Gamba

6-2⁄5′ Third

5-1⁄3′ Fifth

5-1⁄3′ Cone Gamba Fifth

5-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Fifth

4-4⁄7′ Seventh

4′ Doppel Flute

4′ Stopped Flute

4′ Clarabella

4′ Spitz Flute

4′ Zauber Flute

4′ Gemshorn

4′ Cone Flute

3-5⁄9′ Ninth

3-1⁄5′ Tenth

3-1⁄5′ Gemshorn Tenth

2-10⁄11′ Eleventh

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Gemshorn Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Twelfth

2-2⁄7′ Fourteenth

2′ Flute

2′ Magic Flute

2′ Gemshorn  

1-7⁄9′ Sixteenth

1-3⁄5′ Gemshorn Seventeenth

1-3⁄5′ Seventeenth

1-5⁄11′ Eighteenth

1-1⁄3′ Nineteenth

1-1⁄3′ Gemshorn  

1-1⁄7′ Twenty-First

1′ Twenty-Second

1′ Gemshorn Twenty-Second

8⁄9′ Twenty-Third

4⁄5′ Twenty-Fourth

8⁄11′ Twenty-Fifth

2⁄3′ Twenty-Sixth

1⁄2′ Gemshorn Twenty-Ninth

1⁄4′ Gemshorn Thirty-Sixth

32′ Fagotto

16′ Contra Oboe

16′ Clarinet

16′ Vox Humana

8′ Oboe

8′ Clarinet

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Oboe

4′ Clarinet

4′ Vox Humana

Chimes

8′ Marimba Repeat

8′ Marimba Stroke

4′ Glockenspiel Repeat

4′ Glockenspiel Single

2′ Glockenspiel Single

Snare Drum Roll

Snare Drum Tap

Snare Drums Roll

Snare Drums Tap

Wood Block

Castinets

Triangle

Tom Tom

GREAT (Manual II)

32′ Sub Principal 121 pipes

16′ Double Diapason I 97 pipes

16′ Double Diapason II 73 pipes

16′ Double Diapason III 73 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Sub Quint 73 pipes

8′ Principal

8′ Diapason I 73 pipes

8′ Diapason II 73 pipes

8′ Diapason III 73 pipes

8′ Diapason IV 73 pipes

8′ Diapason V 73 pipes

8′ Diapason VI 73 pipes

8′ Diapason VII 73 pipes

8′ Diapason VIII 73 pipes

8′ Diapason IX 73 pipes

8′ Diapason X 73 pipes

8′ Harmonic Flute 73 pipes

8′ Flute Overte 73 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Quint 73 pipes

4′ Octave I 73 pipes

4′ Octave II 73 pipes

4′ Octave III 73 pipes

4′ Octave

4′ Octave IV 73 pipes

4′ Octave V 73 pipes

4′ Harmonic Flute 73 pipes

3-1⁄5′ Gross Tierce 73 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Major Twelfth 73 pipes

2′ Fifteenth I 73 pipes

2′ Fifteenth II 73 pipes

2′ Fifteenth III 73 pipes

2′ Principal

5-1⁄3′ Rausch Quint 146 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Rausch Quint 146 pipes

Grand Cornet XI 803 pipes

Major Sesquialtera V 365 pipes

Furniture VI 414 pipes

Schulze Mixture V 365 pipes

Scharff Mixture III

Doublette Mixture II

16′ Trumpet 73 pipes

8′ Harmonic Trumpet 73 pipes

4′ Clarion 73 pipes

Brass Chorus (floating)

Chimes 37 tubes

8′ Harp 61 bars

4′ Harp

4′ Xylophone 49 bars

2′ Xylophone

Snare Drum Roll

Snare Drum Tap

Snare Drums Roll

Snare Drums Tap

Triangle

Tambourine

Castinets

Wood Block Stroke

Wood Block Roll

Tom Tom

Chimes S. T.

Drums Muffled S. T.

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

BRASS CHORUS (floating)

16′ Trombone 73 pipes

8′ Trombone 73 pipes

8′ Tromba 73 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Tromba Quint 73 pipes

4′ Trombone 73 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Tromba Twelfth 73 pipes

2′ Trombone 73 pipes

Tierce Mixture III 219 pipes

GRAND GREAT (Manual II)

8′ Principal

8′ Tibia Clausa

8′ Tibia Major

4′ Tibia Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Viol

4′ Viol Melody (melody coupler)

4′ Octave

2′ Super Octave

32′ Dulzian (currently playing at 16′)

16′ Trombone

8′ Trombone Melody (melody coupler)

8′ Ophicleide (100′′)

8′ Trumpet

4′ Clarion

4′ Clarion Melody (melody coupler)

GREAT SECOND TOUCH (Manual II)

8′ Viol Phonon

8′ Viol Cello

8′ Viol

8′ Viol

8′ Solo (coupler)

4′ Solo (coupler)

8′ Fanfare (coupler)

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Brass Chorus (floating)

GREAT-SOLO (Manual II)

16′ Wald Flute 97 pipes

16′ Tibia Clausa 97 pipes

16′ Contra Geigen 97 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Wald Quint

10-2⁄3′ Tibia Quint

8′ Diapason Phonon 73 pipes

8′ Horn Diapason 85 pipes

8′ Geigen Principal

8′ Gemshorn 121 pipes

8′ Gemshorn Celeste 89 pipes

8′ Wald Flute

8′ Tibia Clausa

8′ Doppel Gedeckt 73 pipes

8′ Viola D’Gamba 73 pipes

8′ Vox Celeste 73 pipes

6-2⁄5′ Gemshorn Terz 97 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Wald Quint

5-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Quint 109 pipes

4-4⁄7′ Septieme 97 pipes

4′ Octave Phonon

4′ Octave

4′ Principal

4′ Gemshorn

4′ Gemshorn Celeste

4′ Wald Flute

4′ Stopped Flute

4′ Doppel Flute

4′ Viola

4′ Viola Celeste

3-1⁄5′ Gemshorn Tenth

3-1⁄5′ Tenth

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Minor Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Twelfth

2-2⁄7′ Octave Septieme

2′ Fifteenth

2′ Geigen

2′ Gemshorn

2′ Piccolo

1-3⁄5′ Gemshorn Seventeenth

1-3⁄5′ Seventeenth

1-1⁄3′ Nineteenth

1-1⁄7′ Twenty-First

1′ Twenty-Second

4⁄5′ Twenty-Fourth

2⁄3′ Twenty-Sixth

1⁄2′ Twenty-Ninth

1⁄4′ Thirty-Sixth (currently plays Gong)

16′ Oboe Horn 97 pipes

16′ Krummhorn 97 pipes

16′ Saxophone 97 pipes

16′ English Horn 97 pipes

16′ French Horn 97 pipes

16′ Vox Baryton 97 pipes

8′ Oboe

8′ Clarinet 85 pipes

8′ Krummhorn

8′ Orchestral Saxophone 85 pipes

8′ Saxophone

8′ English Horn

8′ Orchestral Horn 85 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth 73 pipes (originally 8′ French Horn)

8′ French Horn

8′ Kinura 73 pipes

8′ Vox Humana 85 pipes

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Octave Horn

4′ Krummhorn

4′ Saxophone

4′ English Horn

4′ French Horn

4′ Vox Humana

SOLO (Manual IV)

16′ Major Flute 85 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Quint Flute

8′ Stentor Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Diapason (fr. Grand Chorus IX)

8′ Tibia Rex 61 pipes

8′ Major Flute

8′ Hohl Flute 61 pipes

8′ Flute Overte 61 pipes

8′ Cello Pomposa 61 pipes

8′ Cello Celeste 61 pipes

8′ Violin 61 pipes

8′ Violin Celeste 61 pipes

5-1⁄3′ Quint Flute

4′ Stentor Octave 61 pipes

4′ Octave (fr. Grand Chorus IX)

4′ Wald Flute 61 pipes

4′ Major Flute

4′ Viola Pomposa 61 pipes

2′ Harmonic Piccolo 61 pipes

Grand Chorus IX 549 pipes

Carillon IV 244 pipes

16′ Tuba Magna (50′′) 85 pipes

16′ Trumpet Profunda 85 pipes

10-2⁄3′ Quint Trumpet

8′ Tuba Imperial (100′′) 61 pipes

8′ Tuba Magna (50”)

8′ Trumpet Royal 61 pipes

8′ Trumpet Profunda

8′ Bugle (50′′) 61 pipes

8′ English Post Horn 61 pipes

8′ French Horn 61 pipes (originally 22⁄3′ Flute Twelfth)

5-1⁄3′ Magna Fifth (50′′)

4′ Tuba Clarion (50′′)

4′ Trumpet Clarion

Brass Chorus (floating)

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

SOLO-GREAT (Manual IV)

16′ Wald Flute

16′ Tibia Clausa

16′ Contra Geigen

10-2⁄3′ Wald Quint

10-2⁄3′ Tibia Quint

8′ Diapason Phonon

8′ Horn Diapason

8′ Geigen Principal

8′ Gemshorn

8′ Gemshorn Celeste

8′ Wald Flute

8′ Tibia Clausa

8′ Doppel Gedeckt

8′ Viola D’Gamba

8′ Vox Celeste

6-2⁄5′ Gemshorn Terz

5-1⁄3′ Wald Quint

5-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Quint

4-4⁄7′ Gemshorn Septieme

4′ Octave Phonon

4′ Octave

4′ Octave Geigen

4′ Gemshorn

4′ Gemshorn Celeste

4′ Wald Flute

4′ Stopped Flute

4′ Doppel Flute

4′ Viola

4′ Viola Celeste

3-1⁄5′ Gemshorn Tenth

3-1⁄5′ Gemshorn Tenth

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth (originally 8′ Fr. Horn)

2-2⁄3′ Minor Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Gemshorn Twelfth

2-2⁄7′ Octave Septieme

2′ Fifteenth

2′ Geigen

2′ Gemshorn

2′ Piccolo

1-3⁄5′ Gemshorn Seventeenth

1-3⁄5′ Gemshorn Seventeenth

1-1⁄3′ Gemshorn Nineteenth

1-1⁄7′ Twenty-First

1′ Twenty-Second

4⁄5′ Twenty-Fourth

2⁄3′ Twenty-Sixth

1⁄2′ Twenty-Ninth

1⁄4′ Thirty-Sixth

16′ Oboe Horn

16′ Krummhorn

16′ Saxophone

16′ English Horn

16′ French Horn

16′ Vox Baryton

8′ Oboe

8′ Clarinet

8′ Krummhorn

8′ Orchestral Saxophone

8′ Saxophone

8′ English Horn

8′ Orchestral Horn

8′ French Horn

8′ Kinura

8′ Vox Humana

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Octave Horn

4′ Krummhorn

4′ Saxophone

4′ English Horn

4′ French Horn

4′ Vox Humana

Chimes

8′ Harp

4′ Harp

4′ Xylophone

2′ Xylophone

ECHO (Manual VI)

16′ Contra Violone 97 pipes

16′ Contra Gamba 85 pipes

16′ Contra Spire Flute 109 pipes

8′ Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Waldhorn 61 pipes

8′ Clarabella 97 pipes

8′ Spire Flute

8′ Spitz Flute 61 pipes

8′ Flute Celeste I 61 pipes

8′ Flute Celeste II 77 pipes

8′ Flute Sylvestre 61 pipes

8′ Flute Celeste 61 pipes

8′ Tibia Mollis 61 pipes

8′ Violone

8′ Violone Celeste 54 pipes

8′ Gamba

4′ Open Flute

4′ Rohr Flute 61 pipes

4′ Cone Flute

4′ Viol

4′ Gamba

3-1⁄5′ Spitz Tenth

2-2⁄3′ Flute Twelfth

2-2⁄3′ Spire Flute Twelfth

2′ Flute Fifteenth

2′ Spire Flute Fifteenth

1-3⁄5′ Spitz Seventeenth

1-1⁄3′ Spire Flute Nineteenth

1′ Spire Flute Twenty-Second

Aetheria VI 366 pipes

16′ Tuba D’Amour 85 pipes

16′ Contra Bassoon 85 pipes

16′ Chalumeau 85 pipes

16′ Vox Humana 85 pipes

8′ Tuba D’Amour

8′ Trumpet Minor 61 pipes

8′ Clarinet

8′ Cor D’Amour 61 pipes

8′ Bassoon

8′ Vox Humana I 61 pipes

8′ Vox Humana II

4′ Octave Clarinet

4′ Tuba D’Amour

4′ Octave Bassoon

4′ Vox Humana

Chimes 25 tubes

String I (floating)

String II (floating)

String III (floating)

Gallery I Reeds (floating)

Gallery II Flutes (floating)

Gallery III Diapasons (floating)

Gallery IV Orchestral (floating)

GALLERY MASTERS

Gallery I Reeds to Bombard

Gallery II Flutes to Bombard

Gallery III Diapasons to Bombard

Gallery IV Orchestral to Bombard

TREMOLOS

Trem Master (affects all Tremolos)

Tremolos Left:

String III

Fanfare Pileata

Fanfare

Gallery IV

Sw-Ch Vox Humana

Swell-Choir

Swell

String I

Choir Philomela

Choir

Open Choir

Tremolos Right:

Great Tibia

Solo 20′′

Gt-Solo Organ Tone

Gt-Solo Wood Wind

String II

Echo

Items in italics await restoration and thus are not operating at present.

Further information about the Midmer-Losh and Kimball pipe organs, including detailed specifications and documentation, can be found at www.boardwalkorgans.org.

Photo: The organ restoration staff (left to right): James Martin, shop apprentice; Carl Hersom, shop apprentice; Scott Banks, membership and events coordinator; Brant Duddy, senior shop technician; Nathan Bryson, curator of pipe organs; Chuck Gibson, professional assistant to the curator

Lost arts

The stone carvings in an ancient cathedral, the sparkles of light on Rembrandt’s tunic, the deep colors of a Tiffany lampshade, the intricacies of a Renaissance tapestry. These are all experiences available to us as we travel to ancient sites and visit museums. They are living testaments to the skills of artists and artisans, expressing their visions, observations, and thoughts in physical media. Did Rembrandt mix his paints from gathered materials as observed in artworks already old when he viewed them? Did he know that his paints would retain their colors and stay on the canvas for 350 years? Visit a modern artists’ supply store, and you will find rack upon rack of tubes of pre-mixed paints from different manufacturers. Do they expect that their products will last on canvas until the year 2352? Do the artists who buy and work with those paints trust that a glimmer of light on the nose of a subject will beguile viewers three centuries from now?

We play and listen to centuries-old organs, experiencing the same lively sounds that musicians and congregations heard over 600 years ago. We marvel at the monumental organ cases, knowing that they were built without the aid of electric milling machines. Perhaps some of us have tried to saw a board from a log by hand. I have. I can tell you it is hard work; it is tricky to produce a board that is anything like straight; and it takes a long time. We read that eighteenth-century organs took eight or ten years to build. Even so, Arp Schnitger (1648–1719) produced ninety-five new organs, forty-eight of which survive. Multiply that by the number of boards sawn by hand—case panels, toeboards, rackboards, keyboards, stop action traces, and hundreds of thousands of trackers. That many organs is a significant life’s work for a modern organ builder. And remember, delivering a pipe organ in those days involved oxcarts and rutted dirt (or mud) roads. Or did Mr. Schnitger set up a workshop in each church, casting metal and soldering pipes on site? That would simplify the logistics.

Something like 2,500 “Hook” organs were built between 1827 and 1927 by E. & G. G. Hook, E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, and Hook & Hastings. Organs were shipped from the workshops in Boston to churches below the Mason-Dixon Line before the Civil War, to California, and throughout the Midwest. By then, steam ferries and railroads were available to make shipments easier—the tracks ran right into the workshop. During the same period, builders like Henry Erben, George Hutchings, George Stevens, and George Jardine, among many others, combined to build thousands of organs across the United States. With the introduction of electricity to pipe organ keyboard and stop actions, Skinner, Möller, Austin, Schantz, Kimball, and others combined to build as many as 2,500 new pipe organs a year in American churches during the 1920s.

Here’s to the crabgrass, here’s to the mortgage . . . .

So sang Allen Sherman in his 1963 smash hit recording, My Son the Nut, the same album that included “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. . . .” The song was about the migration from cities to suburbs in the 1950s: “walk the dog and cut the grass, take the kids to dancing class, Jim’s little league got beat again.”1 During the 1950s and 1960s, suburban churches blossomed. The populations of towns surrounding Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and countless other cities exploded. Twenty years ago, I served a church as music director in a suburb of Boston that never had more than 2,000 residents until the circumnavigating commuter highway Route 128 (now I-95) was built around 1960. Within ten years, there were 15,000 residents, and the little country Congregational church built an impressive new sanctuary with an extensive parish house and a three-manual organ.

Many if not most of those powerful suburban congregations commissioned new pipe organs. Where I grew up, the ubiquitous New England town square had two or three competing churches. One town near home had two three-manual Hook organs built in 1860 and 1870. Another had three Aeolian-Skinners. And by the time I graduated from high school, my hometown had two organs by Charles Fisk, one of which has its fiftieth anniversary this year.

A new wave

Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, hundreds of American churches committed to commissioning new organs built by “boutique” builders of tracker organs, many of which replaced impressive and valuable electro-pneumatic-action organs. Of course, many of those organs had in turn replaced impressive and important nineteenth-century organs. The Andover Organ Company, then led by Charles Fisk, was among the first of the new wave of organ companies. Charles Fisk spun off to start what became C. B. Fisk, Inc., along with the founding of, in no particular order, eponymous organ companies such as Noack, Roche, Brombaugh, Bozeman-Gibson, Bedient, Taylor & Boody, Dobson, Visser-Rowland, and Jaeckel. Casavant started building tracker organs and firms like Wilhelm, Wolff, and Létourneau spun off from there in the following years.

As some of the “older” new firms began “aging out,” a new wave of impressive companies came along such as Juget-Sinclair, Richards, Fowkes & Co., and Paul Fritts, and companies like Nichols & Simpson and the revitalized Schoenstein & Co. started building new electro-pneumatic-action organs of high quality inspired both by the electric-action masterpieces of the early twentieth century and by, I believe, the increasingly high standards of the boutique organ movement. Toward the end of the twentieth century, American organbuilding was a vital, if small industry producing beautiful instruments of all descriptions at a rapid rate.

American organbuilders gathered in Washington, DC, in September 1973 to discuss formation of a new professional organization that would take the name American Institute of Organbuilders. This purpose statement was published in the program book for that gathering:

• to be the first such convention in recent times in North America and to be a model for future conventions of this type to be held regularly;

• to promote the exchange of principles and ideas among established organbuilders to aid in the improvement of the instrument while lowering its costs and ensuring the security of our future;

• to educate ourselves in potential new technologies and construction procedures, some of which are being employed by other industries and arts but perhaps not yet fully realized and exploited by organbuilders;

• to provide the many suppliers of organ parts and materials, many of which are new to our field, with the opportunity to display and demonstrate their developments and ideas where many builders may jointly view and discuss these products;

• to study some general business problems of concern to the organ industry, and to propose courses of action that might be taken by organbuilders, both individually and collectively, to alleviate these concerns;

• to enable social exchanges between organbuilders and their families; to provide families of organbuilders with the opportunity to share in the appreciation of the greater glories of the profession through mutual enjoyment of a convention environment and its program of entertainment designed for all.

The last decades of the twentieth century were very productive for American organbuilding, and we must not forget the vast number of European organs imported to the United States. E. Power Biggs famously purchased an organ from Flentrop that was installed in the Busch-Reisinger Museum (now Busch Hall) at Harvard University in 1957. He made it instantly famous with his fabulously successful series of recordings, Bach: Great Organ Favorites. Many of my friends and colleagues, myself included, cite those recordings as influential to devoting a lifetime to organbuilding. That organ was followed by a flood of Flentrops crossing the Atlantic, a wave greatly advanced by Fenner Douglas, professor of organ at Oberlin in the 1960s and early 1970s, whose influence led to at least dozens of Flentrops installed in American churches and universities, notably those at Oberlin College and Duke University. Also in 1957, Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio, installed a four-manual, sixty-five-rank Beckerath organ, three years before the monumental five-manual Beckerath organ was installed at Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal.

As the twentieth century came to a close, a significant decline in church attendance was well underway. Churches continue to close at an increasing rate. And toward the end of the last century, there was a dip of interest in playing the organ. When I was a student at Oberlin in the 1970s, there were over fifty organ majors in four bustling studios. Fifteen years later, there were fewer than ten. Several colleges and universities closed their organ departments, churches with traditionally active music programs began having trouble filling empty jobs, and for a while things were looking pretty grim for the American pipe organ.

I am carving time into rough blocks for my own convenience, but as the twenty-first century got underway, a fresh wave of brilliant young organists appeared. Stephen Tharp and Ken Cowan, now in their late forties and early fifties, led the pack forging virtuosic concert careers. They were followed in no particular order by Paul Jacobs, Isabelle Demers, Nathan Laube, Katelyn Emerson, and many others, raising the art of organ playing to unprecedented heights. Concurrently, especially following economic lows following 9/11 and the near collapse of the American economy in 2008, noticeably fewer churches embarked on expensive organ renovation or new organ projects. Many of us in the organbuilding trade wondered silently and increasingly out loud if we were heading toward the end of the pipe organ industry.

Convention

The American Institute of Organbuilders held its annual convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, October 8–12, 2022. More than 300 members gathered in a convention hotel there to be immersed in the work of the Historic Organ Restoration Committee that is more than halfway through the herculean task of restoring the legendary Boardwalk Hall organ with seven manuals and 449 ranks. Built by Midmer-Losh, Inc., between 1929 and 1932 (Opus 5550), the Boardwalk Hall organ is the largest in the world, not by ranks (The Wanamaker Organ has more), but with 33,112 pipes. Many of the ranks have eighty-five pipes or more. The committee is about eight years into the project and anticipates completion in 2030. I will bet we will have another convention there then. (See the cover feature for this organ in the November 2020 issue.)

A convention of the AIO typically includes a lot of time riding buses to see organs throughout an area. Because of the huge attraction at the center of this convention, we had just one day of bus travel to visit three marvelous organs in the Philadelphia area: C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 150 (2016) at Christ Church, Episcopal, Philadelphia; Aeolian-Skinner Opus 948 (1936) at St. Mark’s Church, Episcopal, Philadelphia; and the instrument by Kegg Pipe Organ Builders (2014) at Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. These are three very different and very distinguished organs, all beautifully demonstrated, and all terrific examples of the art of American organbuilding. At the convention hotel, perhaps the only large hotel in Atlantic City that does not boast a casino, we heard lectures about the history of the Boardwalk Hall organ, the economics of refurbishing rather than replacing damaged old organ pipes, and the art of structuring a contract to define an organ project, among others. Nathan Laube, the brilliant recitalist and teacher I mentioned earlier, lectured organbuilders about his ideal of the modern organ console—his conclusion, keep it simple.

In the past, I have written in detail about the organs we heard after attending a convention. This time, I want to celebrate the trade. I have related an off-the-cuff bird’s eye view of American organbuilding over the past century to put in context what I am observing now. In addition to our work aiding the sales of vintage pipe organs and dismantling those organs to be delivered to workshops for renovation, the Organ Clearing House is privileged to work with many of our admired companies, assisting with the shipping, hoisting, assembly, and installation of their new organs. This allows us intimate exposure to the methods and practices of a variety of firms and close associations with their largest organs.

While varying styles of worship and the proliferation of digital instruments has consumed much of the market for simple pipe organs, it is clear that we are in an age of monumental new instruments. Noack, Fritts, Fisk, Schoenstein, Richards, Fowkes, Létourneau, Buzard, and Parsons, among others, have built exceptional new organs in the last five years. All of them carry forth the 500-year tradition of organbuilding, many aided by Computer Numerical Control (CNC) routers. These expensive but efficient machines use computer programs to interpret an organbuilder’s drawings to produce repetitive parts automatically, to drill windchest tables, to make toeboards, rackboards, skyracks, and countless other organ parts with precise perfection. Ten years ago, only a few shops had them, now some have two that grind along in the corner of a shop while the organbuilders are free to do the interpretive work that a machine cannot do.

A couple important firms have recently closed. After a century of work and producing more than 2,500 organs, the Reuter Organ Company in Lawrence, Kansas, stopped most operations on December 1. While they remained profitable until the end, as the senior staff reached retirement age, other administrative staff chose not to step in to continue the business. The closure of August Laukhuff GmbH, a huge and important organ supply firm in Weikersheim, Germany, is having a profound effect on American companies. Many organbuilders have long relied on Laukhuff for organ blowers, electric parts like slider motors and pull-down magnets, keyboards, polished façade pipes, action chassis, and countless other widgets essential to the trade. Other firms are working to fill in the gaps, but this remains an important loss.

The AIO has a relatively new tradition of having a special dinner for members under thirty years old. Since the conventions in 2020 and 2021 were postponed because of covid, this year’s dinner included all members under forty, and there were more than thirty in attendance. I was thrilled to realize that in a trade heavily populated by older people, more than ten percent of those attending this convention were under forty. I had wonderful conversations with many of them and was heartened by their excitement and commitment to continuing the art.

This year’s AIO Convention was particularly high-spirited with enthusiasm for our trade abounding. Nathan Bryson, convention chair and curator of the Boardwalk Hall organ, was an enthusiastic and welcoming host. His excitement for his job is evident in the attitudes of the members of the Historic Organs Restoration Committee, both staff and volunteers. My many conversations with our younger colleagues were highpoints of the week for me. I was happy to hear their enthusiasm about their work. Some newcomers to the trade expressed to me their amazement at the rich history of the organ and the complexities of building, restoring, and repairing them. A couple of the younger participants were in the process of starting new workshops, and their excitement was infectious. Many of the younger members are women, bringing lively diversity to our gathering.

Whenever I am with colleague organbuilders, I hear stories of how they got interested in the organ when they were kids, how the first years of learning piqued their interest enough to devote their lives to the trade. I love comparing notes about solving problems. I love hearing about new materials, methods, machinery, and tools that save time and money, and I love the comeradery of spending time with like-minded people.

Above all, I celebrate what seems to be a bright future for American organbuilding. Churches are investing in large expensive projects, and many of our colleague firms have years of contracted work spreading ahead of them. Perhaps most important, I believe that American organ playing is the best it has ever been. As long as there are brilliant, compelling musicians to play on the instruments we build, there will always be new organs to build. Keep working hard, my friends. ν

Notes

1. In fact, the couple singing that song winds up fleeing the suburbs to return to the city: “Back to the crush there, hurry let us rush there, back to the rat race, don’t forget your briefcase, back to the groove there, say, why don’t we move there, away from all this sweet simplicity.”

John Bishop

Industrial hygiene

Photo caption: Boardwalk Hall showing the locations of organ chambers and the adjacent Trump Hotel: 1, Right Stage chamber: Great, Solo, Solo-Great, Grand Great, Pedal Right; 2, Right Forward chamber: String II, Brass Chorus; 3, Right Center chamber: Gallery I, Gallery II; 4, Right Upper chamber: Echo; 5, Left Upper chamber: Fanfare, String III; 6, Left Center chamber: Gallery III, Gallery IV; 7, Left Forward chamber: Choir; 8, Left Stage chamber: Swell, Swell-Choir, Unenclosed Choir, String I, Grand Choir, Pedal Left. (photo credit: Historic Organ Restoration Committee)

In this year of Covid, we have stepped up our personal hygiene. We are wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and not touching public surfaces. We are reciting the alphabet or the Lord’s Prayer while washing our hands. In an earlier column, I suggested the famous hand-washing lines from Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” If you recite it with feeling, you can easily get twenty seconds from it. A meme suggested, “I’ve used so much hand sanitizer that the answers to my eighth-grade social studies test appeared on my wrist.”

Over forty-five years of working on pipe organs, I have used the words “industrial hygiene” to describe how a congregation keeps its buildings. A few years ago, I visited a church in the Pacific Northwest where the rector told me that when he started his ministry there, every nook and cranny was stuffed with junk. He spent a lonely late evening walking through the building, looking into closets, desk drawers, kitchen cabinets, and mechanical spaces, determined to remove anything unneeded to reclaim usable space in the valuable building.

With the support of the vestry and lots of volunteer labor from the members, dumpsters were loaded with the detritus of years of neglect, cabinets were scrubbed, and closets were painted. New ministries were developed, and by the time I visited the place, the building was neat and clean and bustling with all sorts of activity.

This topic comes up in these pages occasionally, typically inspired by the current flow of work of the Organ Clearing House. Loyal readers will recall the organist who called in a panic on a Saturday as a wedding was about to start and the organ wouldn’t. I bolted to the church, walked through the throng of limo drivers, bagpipers, bridesmaids, and groomsmen to the cellar stairs under the organ and found a card table sucked up against the blower intake.

I served a large church in a suburb of Boston as director of music. When I went to the church to audition for the position, I noticed that the stalls in the men’s room were wobbly. They were still wobbly when I left the position seventeen years later. Two years ago, we installed an organ in a small church in rural New Jersey. The building was about thirty years old, attractive and simple, but I was most impressed by the beautifully furnished and equipped restrooms. After decades of experience with crumbling facilities in aging buildings, this made the job much more pleasant. When I commented on this to the pastor, he told me that he was disappointed in the condition of the restrooms when he arrived and thought the good people of the church deserved better. That is a nice way for the church to welcome you.

In one church, we had to climb an iron ladder and walk across the attic to reach the door of the organ chamber. The life-sized plywood cut-outs that formed the Nativity scene for the front lawn were in the attic, and there was the manger, the size of a baby’s crib, laden with a hay bale with a wisp of smoke curling toward the ceiling as its innards decomposed. I lugged it down the ladder to the hallway, went to the office to report it to the secretary, and left the building for lunch. When I came back an hour later, the hay bale had been dutifully returned to the attic. I am pretty sure there would have been a fire if I did not drag it down again, this time outside to the driveway.

Going for the first time to a church with a large organ, I went to the basement to inspect the blower. There was a big old Spencer Orgoblo safely ensconced in a fireproof enclosure that was chock full of junk: a four by eight plywood sign announcing the 1968 church fair, some baby carriages that I supposed failed to sell in 1968, boxes of books, and a hanger rack festooned with abandoned choir robes. Another organ is out of tune, and by the sound of it, we figure there is something wrong with the wind pressure. Yup, a stack of folding chairs lying on the reservoir. That will do it.

Protection

An extension of the importance of good building hygiene is the care of the organ when contactors will be raising dust around the instrument. If you get wind that the people of your church are thinking of any sort of renovation inside the sanctuary, it is important to be sure that the well being of the pipe organ is part of the plan. Your organ technician should be involved, consulting with contractors to establish the extent of protection. Common precautions include:

• putting Ziploc® baggies over the tops of reed resonators, or if the planned work is extensive and extra messy, removing the reeds from the organ and packing them in crates;

• disconnect any expression actions so the shutters can be fastened in the closed position;

• cover any exposed divisions with at least two layers of plastic (so the dirty outer layer can be removed without dumping debris onto the pipes);

• cover an organ case with at least two layers of plastic, taping the seams to be airtight;

• build a sturdy framed box over a detached console, because you know those painters are going to stand on top of it no matter what you say. Remove the pedalboard and bench to safety;

• disconnect power to the blower so it cannot be turned on inadvertently and suck all that nice dust into the organ’s internal mechanisms. Cover the blower air intake with plastic taped firmly in place;

• inspect every area that contains organ components and take appropriate measures;

• be sure not to allow contractors to remove any of this equipment. They will protest that they will be careful, but they will not know the degrees of sensitivity of the instrument. All work relating to protecting the organ should be accomplished by a professional pipe organ company.

This work is expensive, time consuming, and can be inconvenient. In September of 2020, the Organ Clearing House covered a large, new freestanding mechanical-action organ to protect it while the sanctuary was painted. The painting was to be completed so the organ could be recommissioned in time for Christmas. It was completed in mid-December, but because of Covid-related travel restrictions, it would not be possible for the organ to be playable until early February. It was an immense disappointment for all involved, especially considering that this would be only the second Christmas for the new organ. But the valuable and mighty, yet delicate instrument was preserved safely from invasion. Had the organ not been protected, the long-term effects could hardly be calculated. Reed pipes would no longer tune or speak reliably. Adjustment of the action would be compromised. The console cabinet would certainly have been damaged (it is an awful sight to see a drawknob snapped off), and the sound of the flue pipes would have been dulled by accumulation of dust in their mouths. If dust had made its way into the wind system, abrasive dust would speed the deterioration and corrosion of sensitive action parts.

This summer, the Organ Clearing House will clean an organ that was not protected when the ceiling and walls of the nave were sanded and painted, the floor was sanded and refinished, and carpet runners on three aisles were torn up and replaced. Our project will include removing and cleaning all the pipes, vacuuming and polishing the case, dismantling the keydesk to remove abrasive dust from keyboard bushings, cleaning windchests, and “flushing” out the wind system. The façade pipes have elaborate stenciling, recently restored, thus requiring special handling. This work will be exponentially more expensive than covering and protecting the organ before the start of building renovation. And while we have techniques and protocols for handling organ pipes and components with care, partially dismantling the organ will upset its stability so that it will take time after reassembly for the organ to settle down tonally and mechanically.

Water works.

In early January, a water main broke on Lexington Avenue in New York City, and a neighboring church was flooded. Lower-level offices and meeting spaces showed high-water marks on walls and furnishings. Music libraries and filing cabinets were submerged, along with all the trappings and equipment you would expect to find in a busy Midtown church. Only an inch or so of water stood on the floor of the sanctuary, so the free-standing pipe organ was not directly affected, but the amount of moisture introduced inside would necessitate a vigorous, invasive cleaning process. The only way to protect the organ from the remediation was to remove it from the building, and because of the importance of getting the cleaning under way as soon as possible, the organ would be removed immediately. The speed at which that decision was made was a tribute to the commitment of the parish to its organ that is now safely in storage with no schedule established for its return.

Thar she blows . . . .

Atlantic City, New Jersey, is on the southern Jersey shore in an area of rich farmland and state forests. It is about fifty miles north of Cape May, the southern tip of New Jersey that juts out into Delaware Bay, and 125 miles south of New York City. The state’s coastline is famous for beaches, summer bungalows and mansions, shellfish (especially crabs), and boating, but only Atlantic City is a mecca for gamblers. The city is home to nine full-fledged casinos, gaudy complexes with huge hotels and restaurants, high-end shopping, performance spaces, and, of course, acres of gambling floors with armies of one-armed bandits, blackjack, craps, and roulette tables, and (no doubt) secret back rooms where bad things happen.

The city’s waterfront sports a famous boardwalk above the long beach where gamblers can celebrate their winnings, or more likely lament their losses. It is lined with ice cream and salt water taffy shops, al fresco dining, souvenir vendors, and all the hustle-bustle you would expect to find at a popular seaside resort. And there are two immense pipe organs, one of them simply as big as they come.

Boardwalk Hall is perhaps best known as home to the Miss America Pageant—“There she is, Miss America . . . .” It is a capacious place with more than 10,000 seats built in 1929, large enough to have hosted the first-ever indoor college football game and indoor helicopter flight. It has been host to political national conventions (Lyndon Johnson was nominated as the Democratic candidate there), concerts, and even rodeos. And it is the home of the world’s largest musical instrument, the mystical, magisterial, mammoth Midmer-Losh organ with 449 ranks over seven manuals and a total of 33,112 pipes. You can see the bewildering stoplist in the November 2020 issue of The Diapason, pages 1, 14–20, and at boardwalkorgans.org.

Over the last several years, the Historic Organ Restoration Committee has undertaken the painstaking, mind-boggling restoration of the Boardwalk Hall organ and the large Kimball organ in the adjoining 3,000-seat Adrian Phillips Theater. The curatorial staff, assisted by volunteer organ builders, has been methodically moving from one chamber to the next, bringing the long dormant instrument back to life. Nathan Bryson, the organ’s curator, told me that 238 of 449 ranks (about 53%) are now in restored and playable condition.

The mammoth console is in a decorated cylindrical booth at the right of the stage. It towers over people standing next to it and looks like a D-cell battery from the other end of the room. The console booth has doors that close to protect the keyboards and hundreds of stop tablets. Nathan told me that the last time there was an indoor car race, there was a wreck and a chunk of a rubber tire slammed into the doors. Good thing they were closed. Indoor car racing? If we are used to worrying about protecting an organ from some contractor’s dust, how can you protect eight big organ chambers from an automobile race? Nathan explained that they close all the expression shutters (there must be thousands), and run fans inside the chambers blowing outwards to inhibit the influx of dust. It is all in a day’s work when you are caring for the largest organ in the world.

Nathan and his staff faced a challenge larger than indoor car racing and rodeos. On February 17 (Ash Wednesday), just after 9:00 a.m., the neighboring Trump Hotel, part of the Trump Casino complex, was demolished by implosion using 3,000 sticks of dynamite. Years ago, I maintained a small organ that was at the “street end” of a church directly across from the town’s library, the same organ with the card-table wedding. The town had built a sorry addition to the library in the 1950s that was to be demolished. I learned about the event through an emotional call from the organist. Shock waves from the blast had wrecked the organ’s tuning. It was not such a big deal, it was a small organ with everything easy to reach, but when I first read about the intention to demolish a high-rise hotel with over 900 rooms, I wondered about the safety of the organ.

Boardwalk Hall is immediately adjacent to the casino complex, the windows of the organ workshop look directly at the three-or-four-story casino, about two feet away. The hotel was on the other side of the casino. A year before the event, representatives of the demolition company toured the hall and the organ. Overseas shipping containers were stacked outside to protect the hall from falling rubble. To control dust during the implosion, windows and doors were sealed with plywood and plastic, HVAC ducts were sealed with plastic, and organ chamber doors were sealed with plastic, towels, and sandbags.

The Echo division in the Right Ceiling Chamber (#4) would be closest to the action. Lacking the funding to remove the division to safety, Nathan and his staff removed the 16′ Basson, an exceedingly rare stop built by Welte with free reeds and papier-mâché resonators, and they took sample pipes from the other ranks so that they could be reconstructed if damaged.

The staff had learned earlier about the presence of dust in the building when a high-pressure wind line burst off its flange and raised enough dust to set off the building’s fire alarms. As the time of the implosion approached, they set up a video camera to record the event in the hall. Officials cleared the building, and the hotel fell, cheered by the large crowd that had gathered. Videos of the event blanketed the internet. If you are interested in watching it, you’ll have no trouble finding it.

At 11:15 a.m., the staff received the “all clear” notice to reenter the building. When they viewed the video, they were able to see a slight wave of dust move across the hall, enough to worry an organ curator, but nothing like a rodeo or car race.

Congratulations to Nathan Bryson and his staff of four full-time and two part-time technician/restorers for bringing that mighty organ through disruptive events like no other. I encourage you to visit the website to read about the unique instrument, follow the progress of the restoration, and if you choose, click the “Donate Now” button on the home page. They still have 211 ranks to go, five times the size of what we would call a good-sized organ.