Lost Pipe Organs of America

An organ seldom remains in the condition its builder left it for more than forty years. By then, to paraphrase Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing, fashion wears out more organs than performance, and the instrument has been replaced or rebuilt. Even a historically recognized organ can be as endangered as a building with a “landmark” designation: money can change the status of a historic building and its contents; endowments are pilfered and exhausted in a generation.

What is astonishing is the short life so many notable organs had: the great 1863 organ in the Boston Music Hall was auctioned off after twenty-one years; the 1962 Aeolian-Skinner in New York City’s Philharmonic Hall was removed after fourteen years; Washington Auditorium tried to dispose of its eighty-eight-rank Möller in less than eleven years; Chicago’s Steinway Hall was closed and remodeled after only five years; Westchester County Center’s fifty-nine-rank Aeolian ceased to be used regularly within two years. When organs were not rebuilt, moved, sold, or given away, they were put in storage—Springfield’s Steere for forty-five years so far—where they remained until they were dispersed. Miscellaneous pipes often ended up in unexpected places: two ranks from the Waldorf-Astoria Möller found their way into the French Classic gallery organ at St. Thomas’ Church in New York City.

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.