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With Rollin Smith’s Lost Pipe Organs of Amer­i­ca, the Organ His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety cel­e­brates the Gold­en Age of pipe organ­build­ing and beyond. Every facet of Amer­i­can life, not only in wor­ship, but in con­cert halls, audi­to­ri­ums, uni­ver­si­ties, hotels, world’s fairs, and expo­si­tions, fea­tured a notable instru­ment, now lost to history.

Lost Pipe Organs of Amer­i­ca range from that of the Boston Nation­al Peace Jubilee of 1869; New York’s Chick­er­ing, Mendelssohn, and Carnegie Halls; Hotel Astor and Wal­dorf-Asto­ria; the E. & G.G. Hook at Louisville’s South­ern Expo­si­tion of 1883; Chicago’s Stein­way Hall and Sta­di­um; audi­to­ri­ums in Den­ver, Wash­ing­ton, Detroit, and Chica­go; the 1915 Pana­ma-Pacif­ic Exposition’s Fes­ti­val Hall, and Lin­coln Center’s Phil­har­mon­ic Hall. A galaxy of America’s organ­builders include Hook, Jar­dine, Roo­sevelt, Skin­ner, Far­rand & Votey, Aeo­lian, Möller, Austin, Estey, Bar­ton, Wurl­itzer, and Aeo­lian-Skin­ner. Hun­dreds of illus­tra­tions are what you have come to expect, and foot­notes are, as usu­al, not to be missed.