Preserving the Pipes

By M.J. Prest

In the 1920s, theater organs accompanied silent movies to evoke emotion and generate sound effects; each showing was in effect a live performance. The versatile instrument required just one organist to mimic all the sounds of a full orchestra.

Today, only a handful of the organs remain — including one at New York’s Radio City Music Hall — but the Free State Theatre Organ Society, in Halethorpe, Md., was founded to ensure that the complex instruments do not fade into obscurity.

The society has grown from a group of 12 organ enthusiasts in 1985 to a membership of more than 260. Twice a week, a crew of up to 20 volunteers works on the organization’s latest restoration project (shown here), a theater organ with three keyboards that control all 400 bells, whistles, drums, and pipes. When completed, it will replace the group’s first and smaller restored organ, installed in the Rice Auditorium at the Spring Grove Center, in Catonsville, Md., a suburb of Baltimore.

Once a month, the society offers free concerts at the center to attract volunteers and donations, as well as to spread the word about preserving the organs.

“We are an organization devoted to saving something that is part of American musical heritage,” says Roy Wagner, a retired salesman who is membership chairman of the society. “It’s a field that is slipping out of existence.”

The group’s main expenses are the materials and tools used to repair the instruments; the bulk of the work is performed by volunteers, and the remains of six theater organs have been donated to the group over the last 20 years, which could enable up to four more restoration projects with the parts they now own.

The society brings in $4,000 annually in donations, but certain aspects of the restoration process — such as the more than $20,000 required for a computer system for the new organ — require the group to apply for grants to pay for parts and outside professional labor.