Wanamaker Organ

Information about the restoration of the historic Wanamaker organ can be received by sending a minimum $15 donation to become a member of The Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, 224 Lee Circle, Bryn Mawr, PA 19019-3726 USA.

Members receive news about Friends events and four issues of The Stentor, the Society's illustrated quarterly historical newsletter and magazine. (Additional postage will be required for mailings out of the USA.)

The pictures on this page are from the Guide to Philadelphia's Historic Wanamaker Grand Organ published by the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ. The booklet contains full specifications, historical information, and pictures. Write to the Friends at the above address and ask information about purchasing the booklet.

The corporation which owns Hecht's Department Stores and Lord & Taylor has stated that it will continue to support the restoration of the organ, which involves considerable expense and is expected to take at least two more years. The store has been renovationed and converted to a Lord & Taylor's. It re-opened for business on August 6, 1997 with a ceremony including a speech by Ed Rendell, mayor of Philadelphia, and a performance including the organ (Peter Conte at the console), brass ensemble, and choir.

"Suddenly, organ music fills the space. Powerful, full-throated, intricate . . . it pours from golden pipes arrayed at one end of the atrium. Heads snap up. Chills travel up and down spines. Can you see it? asks a woman, peering upward. Can you see the organ? " --The New York Times, 1986

The Wanamaker Grand Organ in Philadelphia has been thrilling shoppers every day since it first filled the Grand Court with music on June 22, 1911. Eighty years later, in the fall of 1991, an organization of Friends was formed to help sustain the musical mission of this Philadelphia landmark.

Built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the Wanamaker Organ was designed by renowned organ architect George Ashdown Audsley. Original plans for the heroic instrument called for more than 10,000 pipes, and its construction was on such a lavish scale that costs soared to $105,000, bankrupting the builder.

In 1909, Philadelphia merchant-prince John Wanamaker brought the instrument for his new Philadelphia emporium. Thirteen freight cars were required to ship the entire organ from St. Louis. The Grand Organ was first heard in the stores seven-story atrium in June 1911, at the exact moment when England's King George was crowned. Later that year, it was used when President Taft dedicated the store. Despite its immense size, the tone was judged inadequate to fill the huge court. Wanamaker's opened a private pipe-organ factory in the store attic, employing up to 40 full-time employees to enlarge the instrument. William B. Fleming, the original factory supervisor, was hired to direct the work. Lavish construction and elegant workmanship made the Wanamaker Organ both a tonal wonder and a monument to superb craftsmanship. The largest pipe is made of flawless Oregon Sugar Pine three inches thick and over 32 feet long. The smallest pipe is a quarter-inch in length. More than 8,000 pipes were added by 1917, and from 1924 to 1930 an ad- ditional 10,000 pipes were installed, bringing the total number of pipes today to 28,500.

Commanding these huge resources is a massive console with six ivory keyboards and 729 color-coded stop tablets. There are 168 combination buttons and 42 foot controls.

During the lifetime of John Wanamaker and his son Rodman, the finest musicians were brought to the store for brilliant after-business-hours concerts, including France's Marcel Dupre, Louis Vierne and Nadia Boulanger, Italy's Fernando Germani and Marco Enrico Bossi, and England's Alfred Hollins.

In a 1919 gala, virtuoso Charles M. Courboin and Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed before a crowd of 15,000. Since then, the world's finest organists have continued to perform at Wanamakers, many making special pilgrimages.

In 1986, the evening-concert tradition was continued as the organ marked its 75th anniversary with a Wayne Concert Series Keith Chapman recital that attracted a huge audience with representatives from all parts of the U.S.

Now a National Historic Landmark and valued in excess of $50 million, the Wanamaker Organ is of the American Symphonic design, which can play the great organ masterworks as well as the entire range of orchestral literature. The pipework encompasses the resources of three symphony orchestras.

Friends of the Wanamaker Organ is a world-wide group of sponsors and supporters formed to encourage the preservation and musical mission of this National Historic Landmark. Dues of $15 entitle the contributor to Society membership and four issues of The Stentor, the Society's quarterly historical newsletter. Donations in excess of that sum will allow Society expansion and underwrite the active Friends of the Wanamaker Organ concert program at the Store.

The Society's recent music galas include the 1994 Wanamaker Organ 90th Birthday Celebration, which received widespread national and local media coverage and included an appearance by Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. Other events include an Organ-Orchestra gala in 1995 with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the annual Wanamaker Organ Day celebrations (1995 and 1996) and the 1996 Organ Historical Society concert at Hecht's, which drew an audience of 500, the largest in the history of the O.H.S.

"In a quiet and incontrovertible way, Friends of the Wanamaker Organ have orchestrated one of the most artful campaigns ever tailored to an organ preservation effort, and the resulting goodwill and publicity can only help to safeguard the future of this one-of a-kind treasure."--Jonathan Ambrosino, Journal of The Symphonic Organ Society

The Stentor is published in the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, with all renewals taking place at the beginning of the year. Those joining in the middle of the calendar year who do not wish to receive that year's back issues can pay just for the issues still to be published (at $4 apiece). Kindly make checks payable to Friends of the Wanamaker Organ.

Please mail subscriptions with your name and address to Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, 224 Lee Circle Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-3726

Quotes About The Wanamaker Organ

1904 Alexandre Guilmant, French virtuoso and composer: The chief reason for coming to the St. Louis Exposition was to play on the great organ, and I have not been disappointed; it is a magnificent organ.

1911 John Wanamaker: I heard the big St. Louis organ yesterday for the first time. It is a beauty and a hummer in the great fine court. Think of a store with the undoubtedly largest organ in it of the United States and its echo--a fine Choir Organ on the 10th floor and its still other great organ in Egyptian Hall. Surely we are well organ-ized.

1919 Alexander Russell, Wanamaker Stores music director: I do not believe that any one of the thousands present had heard such a stupendous crash of sound as occurred at the end of the first and last movements of the [Widor] Symphony [VI], when the entire power of the organ and the 100-piece [Philadelphia Orchestra, under Leopold Stokowski] combined in a perfect Niagara of sound.

1919 Leopold Stokowski, Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra: The series of organ concerts played by such an artist as Courboin on the magnificent organ at Wanamaker's is of the highest quality musically. I shall never forget my impression of Courboin's playing of the glorious Passacaglia in C Minor of Bach. It was of an indescribable grandeur.

1919 Dr. John M'E Ward, music critic for The Diapason: The Wanamaker organ is the largest in the world...and represents, first, beauty and refinement of tone and, second, enormous musical power. As the full rounded notes were tossed back and forth, one could not fail to realize himself in the presence of an instrument not only of huge proportions, but of superb beauty and refinement.

1920 The Independent, in an article entitled "The Store with the Right Idea": Perhaps the most remarkable store scene ever witnessed opens the day here. At 9 o'clock a bugle call is sounded from the organ loft in the Grand Court, by uniformed members of the boys and girls band. Customers gathered outside throng in; but few start shopping; they stand by the walls, pillars and counters, waiting, expectant. From the largest organ in the world suddenly peals forth a rich volume of heavenly music, bearing a sense of sublime grandeur as of an old cathedral. The organ voluntary lasts thirty minutes. The arrangement of the store enables 25,000 people to hear the music easily and comfortably. Hosts of eager listeners wait for the music only, they do not buy a thing, and they are as welcome as the shoppers. Could there be a finer prelude to the day's work, merely to put customers and clerks in tune with themselves and each other?

1923 Charles A. Radzinsky, Wanamaker Organ historian: The most modern, as well as the largest, most complete in all respects, and the most powerful organ ever built is that in the great Court in the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia, Pa....While the full main organ is being played, and the full etherial [sic] organ is then drawn, it seems like a crowning blaze of sound. The arrangement of the various passage-boards and stairways leading to all parts of the organ seem nearly perfect, as any pipe in the whole instrument can be reached without in the least disturbing any other. The chest work is carried out on an immense scale....The voicing is magnificently done....The blending of all these stops is little short of marvelous, and every part of the work seems to have been carried out with the rarest skill, no expense or pains having been spared, to make this organ a masterpiece theoretically, as well as practically. The tone is beautiful from the softest stop...to the majesty of the full organ, which crashes into every nook and cranny of the colossal building.... When the full power of the solo and ethereal organs is drawn on in combination with the full main organ, [then] one realizes what a wonderful instrument this is. It then seems as if a thunderbolt of sound crashes through the building from etherial heights, and with all this terrific power it is still smooth and musical. 1920s Leopold Stokowski Mr. Rodman Wanamaker has always been devoted to music and the fine arts, and has so often generously given to the public concerts of the greatest classical music in the Wanamaker Grand Court.

c. 1924 Rodman Wanamaker, son and successor to John Wanamaker: As long as I live we will continue to enlarge, improve and beautify it until it combines the grandeur of a great organ with the tone colors and beauty of a great symphony orchestra....Mere size is not what I want. What I desire is beauty of tone and quality of workmanship: in short, the finest organ in the world.

1926 Edward Cadoret Hopkins, historian: In the Aeolian shops at [the time shortly before the Louisiana Purchase Organ was built] was a small insurgent group, headed by Mr. William B. Fleming, who were in favor of moving to California. Negotiations were entered into that resulted in the appointment of Mr. Fleming as the Superintendent of Organ Construction in the Los Angeles factory, and the installation of some of the most skilled of his associates as heads of the various departments [of the Murray Harris Organ Company]....They came prepared to give of their best to the new establishment, unhampered by traditional policies and the close competition of the East....All worked with the one idea of producing The Finest Organ in the World, according to their lights. There was something of the medieval artist about each of these men. Coming in contact with them in early manhood, I was impressed with their devotion to detail, the precision of their results and the lavish care bestowed upon parts that were never to see the light of day after their installation. There was no resort to economizing on important details in any of the work of these years.

c. 1927 Louis Vierne, famous blind organist Notre Dame de Paris: In the center of his store in Philadelphia, [Wanamaker] has built a formidable organ of 240 stops, the largest in the world, whose sonority of ensemble is of rare power and which contains a considerable number of interesting solo stops. In the evenings the center of the store is transformed into an immense concert hall capable of holding more than ten thousand persons. I played before that audience with an emotion which I shall remember all my life.

c. 1929 E. Power Biggs, organ virtuoso: You can walk around inside the console just as you might walk about in an ordinary organ!

c. 1932 William H. Barnes, organ authority and author: Richness and mellowness of tone are results which are directly proportional to the number of subdued tones that are combined, all of which will blend into a rich ensemble. A marvelous example of this is the magnificent organ in the Wanamaker store in Philadelphia. This organ is one of the largest and in some ways the finest organ in the world today. One of its most satisfying features is the richness and mellowness of tone that is produced by hundreds of stops voiced with a moderate degree of power. The wealth of tonal texture is indescribable. The same volume could be secured from a small fraction of the number of stops this organ contains. Indeed, this is demonstrated admirably by a few sets of high pressure Reeds in the Ethereal Division of this same organ, which dominate the tone of ten times the number of softer registers, but produce a totally different effect.

Before 1936 Ernest M. Skinner, organbuilder [paraphrase]: Congratulations! It sounds like a million dollars!

1939 From THE DIAPASON's coverage of the AGO Convention: A real thrill such as few men today can give in the manner of Virgil Fox, the youthful wizard, awaited those who gathered around the grand court in the Wanamaker store to hear his recital....Even the store forces and the customers, long attuned to the strains of the world's largest organ, evoked by master organists, took notice as the sounds reverberated from the first floor to the top, and business was practically suspended.

1941 Alexander Russell: Probably the most majestic musical instrument in the world--not only theoretically, but actually, a masterpiece.

1948 Charles OConnell, director of Victor Red Seal records. John Wanamaker purchased from one of the expositions the nucleus of the organ now in the Philadelphia Wanamaker Store

possibly the largest and I think certainly the most beautiful instrument in the world.

1949 MARCEL DUPRE, internationally renowned French virtuoso. In America, [my favorite organ] is still the organ in the Wanamaker Store in Philadelphia. It is still the greatest. It has everything and leaves nothing to be desired.

1949 JAMES FRANCIS COOKE, Editor-in-Chief of Etude, the music magazine. I have always thought that the organ had a far higher publicity appeal than even Mr. John Wanamaker or Mr. Rodman Wanamaker imagined. In fact, along with the Liberty Bell it is one of the attractions of Philadelphia.

1949 MARY VOGT, Wanamaker Organist (1917-66). [The Wanamaker Organ] really did change the character of the store from that of a stereotyped retail mart to an institution with a unique public appeal.

1953 KAY MOTT, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist. Philadelphians remember best how the [Wanamaker] organ's music has been woven through the memories of countless Christmas seasons. How it has furnished a pleasant background for thousands of noon and evening meetings at the ``Eagle in the court below. Its part of Philadelphia now.

1966 JAMES FELTON, music critic. [Virgil Fox] drew boldly on the enormous resources of this mammoth instrument, filling the whole store with waves of thrilling power.

1966 MARSHALL YAEGER, commentator. The Wanamaker Organ has always been a great example of the ``orchestral organs which were built during a time when America was not yet able to afford large symphony orchestras....An organist sitting at the console has at his disposal hundreds of eight-foot stops which literally bring the equivalent of three symphony orchestras to his fingertips....The beauty of its sound--which will always be unique--evokes the warm feeling of an era when great crowds used to gather in large civic auditoriums and to be entertained.

c. 1970 MARCEL DUPRE I shall never forget the evening of the 8th of December, 1921, when, having been given several themes...I decided, in a flash, to improvise an organ symphony [on the Wanamaker Organ] in four movements which depicted in music the life of Jesus....This improvisation was to become my Symphonie-Passion, a work I began to compose when I returned to France. As Dr. Russell announced my scheme to the audience, everyone in the Grand Court stood up. Encouraged by this enthusiasm, I improvised, feeling as I had never felt before.

c. 1970 OLIVIER MESSIAEN, celebrated French composer. The Wanamaker organ was suitable, and was perhaps the best for the vast stature of [Marcel Dupre himself, it was the grandest, the most sublime, the most powerful [performance anywhere].

1971 EDWARD W. FLINT, Wanamaker Organ historian. The wind supply [of the Wanamaker Organ] was copious, even extravagant, the several blowers having, as of 1928, over 150 horsepower.... [Builder William Boone] Fleming's action work was ``massive. He insisted on the finest materials and generally used ``five screws where four would do.

1973 PAUL M. STRICKLER, commentator While the majority of concert halls and churches in America and Europe contain pipe organs, there are, scattered throughout the world, relatively few instruments that can be regarded as monuments to the art of organ building. These instruments represent turning points in stylistic design, pinnacles of craftsmanship, or have earned a place in history through the artists who have performed on them. The John Wanamaker Organ qualifies on all three points....Its fame is based on its artistic construction, unique tonal design, and an association with the greatest performers of the twentieth century.

1975 ORPHA OCHSE in HISTORY OF THE ORGAN IN THE U.S. [The Wanamaker Organ,] one of the most famous of the large early twentieth-century organs symbolized the unity that improved modes of transportation and communication had given the United States. This organ was designed by a man in New York, built by a California firm, exhibited in Missouri, and permanently installed in Pennsylvania.

1976 DAVID HALL Stereo Review editor [The] Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia stands as one of the major monuments of ``orchestral organ design.

c. 1980 VIRGIL FOX, American virtuoso organist. This largest organ in the world is like playing in a candy-toy shop for a child of four--the first time that he has ever experienced either one. It is a colossal tonal spread!

1982 KEITH CHAPMAN, Wanamaker Organist (1966-89). Yes, this is the ultimate one. 1986 The New York Times, an article entitled ``Wanamaker's Has Everything, Even Shopping: Suddenly, organ music fills the space. Powerful, full-throated, intricate and classical, it pours from golden pipes arrayed at one end of the atrium. Heads snap up. Chills travel up and down spines. ``Can you see it? asks a woman, peering upward. ``Can you see the organ?

1988 RAY BISWANGER, Wanamaker Organ historian. The apotheosis of the symphonic school of organ design.

1988 KEITH CHAPMAN The Romantic Organ was meant to imitate to some degree the resources of the symphony orchestra. The Wanamaker Organ is meant to be a symphony orchestra. It carries it to an ultimate extreme....The idea of having an organ in a department store is one that really would be quite impossible to attain today. Wanamaker, when he built this store, was able to indulge purely a personal whim. He loved the arts. He loved music, he loved painting, he loved sculpture, and he indulged himself by simply deciding that the greatest organ in the world will be located on the balcony of the central court.

1988 ANTHONY BAGLIVI, Editor, The American Organist. [The Wanamaker Organ] came about through a unique combination of philanthropy and artistic seriousness. Many important musicians and designers were allowed to express themselves as never before to create an instrument that was an immediate success and continues today to be a landmark expression of the orchestral school of organbuilding. The Wanamaker story is also important as a record of this country's growing fascination with foreign musicians....The list of organists brought to these shores to play the instrument in the Grand Court was truly impressive and ultimately influential. From the very beginning, there existed a close association between the Wanamaker Organ and the great Philadelphia Orchestra and its conductor, Leopold Stokowski. It will surprise many to learn that Joseph Jongen's magnificent Symphony Concertante, Op. 81, written in 1926, was a Wanamaker commission.... Anyone who has stood in the Grand Court when the full organ is played cannot but be impressed as that great sound enfolds you. It is unlike any other musical experience in the world.

1989 FRANK H. TAYLOR, organist. I don't suppose I have ever been so moved by any other music in my life [as at Virgil Fox's 1939 AGO concert at Wanamakers]. Virgil's genius was part of it, but so was that incredible organ that wraps its sound around you--and squeezes.

1989 ROBERT CUNDICK, JOHN LONGHURST and CLAY CHRISTIANSEN, organists at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City This unique and important American organ...has contributed to a lively musical culture [in the Philadelphia area] for... many years.

1989 DOUGLAS MAJOR, organist and choirmaster, The National Cathedral It is a great treasure of the music world, the city and people of Philadelphia, and indeed of the United States.

1989 JACK M. BETHARDS, President, Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America This magnificent pipe organ is beloved worldwide. Being the largest in the world has given this organ--and the Wanamaker store--a degree of fame that goes far deeper than just the musical world....In the long view, the Wanamaker organ may turn out to be one of the best promotional investments ever made by American business. 1989 RALPH BLAKELY, Wanamaker Organ historian The...Grand Court Organ...[has] become part of the patrimony of the people of The United States of America.... While the sound is amazingly orchestral the kinesis of the sound waves [the Grand Organ] produces in the building exceeds that made by any orchestra. The organ's blowers draw 178 horsepower. Stops ranging in pitch from the 64 Gravissima to the 2 trebles speak in great masses so as to make the organ audible everywhere in the store. The floors, the walls the counters and the stock are forced into sympathetic resonance. Hearing the powerful sound is closely akin to experiencing a mild earthquake...

1989 JOHN GRADY, Director of Music and Organist, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York It's one of our national treasures....

1989 BARBARA OWEN, music critic and author This instrument has played an important role in American musical history ever since it was created through the liberality of Mr. Rodman Wanamaker....There has hardly been a world-class organ recitalist...who has not given a recital at Wanamaker's at some time or another. Yet the instrument has also given pleasure to Christmas shoppers and others over the years, for its huge size allows for a wide range of repertoire. [It represents] a unique and distinguished tradition in the annals of the American organ.

1991 NELSON BARDEN, historian, organ restorer What a celestial sound that organ makes. I think the famous 100 ranks of strings are the closest to heaven I'm going to get on this earth. I've never seen battleship construction on an organ of the magnitude and scale of this one, with such a profligate use of materials.

1991 JACK BETHARDS, organ builder, historian By most measures it is the world's largest pipe organ. To give you some idea of its immensity, it took me nine hours of fairly concentrated work just to tour through it! When one thinks of 469 ranks, there is a temptation to dismiss such a thing as a musical monstrosity--nothing more than a fascinating curiosity. In most cases, such an assumption would be safe, but this instrument is a truly grand exception and one that deserves serious musical consideration. . . . I was struck by two points. First, the workmanship throughout the organ is magnificent as well as monumental. As you know, the organ started life in the Los Angeles factory of the Murray M. Harris company. We are intimately familiar with instruments built at the same time by this fabled company. I can assure you that the workmanship of the Wanamaker organ is of the same very high standards and that the additions made over they years in the Wanamaker organ ship followed the Murray M. Harris tradition admirably. Second, I was struck by how very musical this instrument is. It is not just a collection of stops, but a true ensemble of ensembles. The voicing is beautiful and it is not an instrument purely of effect, but one of substance.

1991 JONATHAN AMBROSINO, historian The Wanamaker Organ constitutes ``an indescribably magnificent instrument, [equipped with] the world's finest string ranks, with more Kimball pipework in one room than [can be found] anywhere else . . .

1992 JONATHAN AMBROSINO This indescribably magnificent instrument has no equal and no superior. Not only is its tone the standard against which other work is judged, but the sublime effect instills in the listener an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime remembrance.

1993 DOC SEVERINSEN Visitors should make it a point to be at the fabulous Wanamaker Store near noontime to hear the marvel of the Wanamaker Organ.

1994 STEVEN SPIELBERG When I was young and my parents went shopping at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia they used to put me under the eagle and have me there for an hour and a half, alone . . . because I was impossible to shop with. My job was not to wander--no nannies, no baby sitters . . . So they would go around Wanamaker's and I would sit there terrified because there was this eagle over me, there were a million people and there were nuns playing the organ. I used to dread more than anything being stuck under that eagle

1996 WOLFGANG SAWALLISCH Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra The Wanamaker Organ is part of the experience of being in Philadelphia.

1996 CARLO CURLEY, virtuoso This pipe-organ is a landmark without peer in America or abroad--the store is a Mecca for lovers of the King of Instruments. The Grand Court Organ is by far the most expensive single item in any department store on earth, being valued in the tens of millions of dollars!

1996 COLVIN RANDALL, publicity manager, Longwood Gardens The Wanamaker Organ is, in my opinion, the most significant organ in the United States, not only for its size but for its one-of-a-kind sound. It is a fitting centerpiece to what is unquestionably the most sumptuous retail space ever created.

1996 MICHAEL BARONE, Minnesota Public Radio host of Pipedreams

Millions of people have heard this instrument, millions remember Philadelphia because of the Wanamaker Organ's music.

1996 FREDERICK SWANN, organist of The Crystal Cathedral

This instrument [is] one of the foremost organs IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. . . . The Wanamaker Organ at Hecht's/Lord & Taylor is as much a part of Philadelphia's heritage and scene as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is to New York. . . . In sonority, subtlety and richness of tone, the Wanamaker Organ is unmatched. Its place in American music is virtually unequalled.