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Rare antique organ, built in Mason City, to Illinois school

Started by KB7DQH, April 12, 2012, 03:55:04 PM

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KB7DQH

http://globegazette.com/news/local/rare-antique-organ-built-in-mason-city-to-illinois-school/article_64979fc2-845d-11e1-b6db-0019bb2963f4.html

Quote2, 2012 12:06 am  | (0) Comments





The Verney Organ Co. produced pipe organs from its founding in 1900 to about 1910 in Mason City on First Street Southwest.

A rare pipe organ built in Mason City more than 100 years ago and headed for disassembly has been saved.

The organ, produced in 1904 by the Verney Organ Co. in Mason City, has been purchased by a performing arts school and will be moved to Dixon, Ill.

There, it will be installed in Philander Hall, one of the performance venues operated by the VIVA! Performing Arts School. Dixon is about 60 miles northeast of the Quad Cities.

The organ has been housed for several years at Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids. It was purchased in the 1990s from Parkersburg United Methodist Church, its original owner.

Two years ago, the church opted to sell the organ. Members wanted to reconfigure the church's worship and music space, and the Verney, with its towering, two-story-high pipes, could not be part of the plans. The organ, however, was still in fine shape. The church offered it for sale for $1.

Church members could not find a buyer. Finally, they decided that if the organ could not be sold it would be dismantled and sold for parts.

Although Mason City residents worked to see if the organ could be brought back to its birthplace — Kinney Pioneer Museum and the American Guild of Organists, North Iowa Chapter among them —they found the Verney organ was too big to house and too expensive to move.

"There just aren't a lot of places you can put it," said Richard Peterson, president of the board of trustees for Kinney Pioneer Museum.

VIVA! officials heard of the Verney through the Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, said Curt Schmitt, chairman of the board of VIVA!.

Schmitt built organs for 40 years and knew the Dobson people well. Dobson had done some extensive restoration of the Verney in the past.

Schmitt knew less restoration would be needed on the Verney than what would be needed on another organ the school first considered using. The school expects to spend thousands of dollars to move and install the organ.

"It is distinctly beautiful," he said of the organ. "The case ... the stenciling on the pipes. No one does that anymore — no one.

"This was the maker's magnum opus," he added.

The organ has a "genteel sound," he said — a good fit for the Philander, a 60-seat hall that features chamber music performances. Students will receive instruction on the Verney.

The Rev. Martha Rogers of Christ Episcopal Church said she was "thrilled" the organ would be preserved.

She said when the story of the potential demise of the organ circulated, the church was flooded with offers from all over the nation, she said.

"Not only will this organ find a home, it will be performed on and kept in top-notch shape," she said.

Only three Verney organs are known to survive. The others are in Terre Haute, Ind., built in 1905 for the Allen Chapel AME Church, where it still resides, and at Highland, Wis.

So... "Three Cheers" for the Associated Press ??? ;)

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."