William Boone Fleming, the original factory supervisor, was hired to direct the work.įrom the beginning the instrument was an Art Organ. Wanamaker’s opened a private pipe-organ factory in the Store attic, employing up to 40 full-time employees to enlarge the instrument. The Wanamaker Organ Shop on the Store’s top floo, 1927ĭespite its immense size, the tone was judged inadequate to fill the huge court. Later that year, it was prominently featured when President William Howard Taft dedicated the Store. The Grand Organ was first heard in the Store’s seven-story atrium on June 22, 1911, at the exact moment when England’s King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Thirteen freight cars were required to ship the entire organ from St. In 1909, Philadelphia merchant-prince John Wanamaker bought the instrument for his new Philadelphia emporium.
The train that brought the Organ to Philadelphia
The heroic instrument that resulted had five manuals, more than 10,000 pipes, and it won the Grand Prize and five other medals at the Fair, where was played by Alexandre Guilmant and virtually every other notable organist of the day. The investment, however, paid huge musical dividends. Louis World’s Fair - Festival HallĪnd the refusal of the Kansas City Convention Hall authorities to accept the organ they had commissioned following the Fair, would ultimately lead to the company’s demise. But the organ’s soaring $105,000 price tag, 1904 St. Harris company was rechristened The Los Angeles Art Organ Company. Living in a land with abundant mineral resources and superb lumber from pristine, old-growth forests, Harris was able to invest the finest in materials in his organs, and he brought a group headed by master craftsman William Boone Eben Smithįleming into his group to incorporate the latest developments in electric action into his instruments, with the patents that went with them.ĭuring construction of the organ costs skyrocketed and certain financial manipulations by Harris came to light, causing the company to be taken over by its chief investor, a Colorado mining mogul named Eben Smith. Harris, a superb organ builder hailed as “The Father of Organ Building in the American West.” Harris was also a shrewd investor and promoter. The driving force behind the project was Murray M. Louis World’s Fair, the Wanamaker Organ was designed by renowned organ architect George Ashdown Audsley, author of The Art of Organ-Building.
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