Standing in front of the six-to-eight-foot tall organ pipes of the Kent Lutheran Church’s newest acquisition, it’s hard to imagine one person being responsible for so much acoustic output.
More than 3,000 pipes make up the organ’s acoustic range, varying from enormous metal bass pipes to diminutive wooden whistles, and they’re all controlled by a single console. Kind of like being at the helm of a Star Destroyer, the Galactic Empire’s signature vessel.
It was a lucky find for the Kent Lutheran Church, discovered in Salem, Mass., in an old church scheduled for demolition.
Church member Fergus Prestbye expects that once the organ is set up in the church, it will cover most of the sanctuary’s rear wall and extend out eight feet.
The church has spent $50,000 so far on acquiring and moving the organ over to Washington, but $450,000 will be needed to complete the instrument. Kent Lutheran Church has been in need of an organ for some time, but the issue was only broached in the last few years. Sean Haley, the church’s organist and music director, sparked the discussion while he was still applying for his job at the church.
The church’s existing electronic organ was “on its last legs,” says Haley. He suggested, ever so cautiously, the idea of getting a new organ. It was “one of the first things I says, which more often than not gets you passed for a job!”
The discussion grew quickly as the older organ began to give out, and what started as a minor nuisance for Haley became a very real need.
Instead of purchasing a replacement organ, Haley suggested to the church that they look to acquire an authentic pipe organ with more longevity. “Electronic organs have a very limited lifespan,” says Haley, “while pipe organs can be three to four hundred years old.”
After some searching around the U.S. for different organs, the church’s organ committee discovered First Baptist Church of Salem, Mass., which was scheduled for demolition after being acquired by the State through eminent domain.
According to Haley, the church’s 135-year-old organ “was going to become an orphan really quickly, actually it was going to end up in a dumpster!” The state planned to demolish the entire church and expand its buildings out to the lot. The organ would have to go with the church.
So the organization stepped up efforts to save the instrument and move it, pipes and all, across the country. They convinced the state that it “would be in their better interests for us to save the organ instead of knock it down along with the church.”
$35,000 and two weeks later, the entire assembly had been moved to various houses of church members. Now that it’s in Kent, the second half of the restoration can start, but Haley says that it’s going to come at a serious cost.
The organ’s parts and components are almost all hand crafted, says Haley, who works at an organ production company in Kent for his everyday work. Metal parts will need to be hand refined, and the woodworking is all planned to be custom. “Fine woods like oak and things certainly aren’t getting cheaper these days,” says Haley. “It all adds up very quickly.”
Haley expects the overall restoration and installation to cost at least a half a million dollars, but relative to getting a new organ for the church, it’s a better move. Haley suspects a new organ could cost almost two million dollars.
Currently, the organs remaining pipes are stored on site at Kent Lutheran Church and will still need quite some time to restore. But Prestbye and others at the church hope that when the project is complete, they’ll have a central attraction for organ and classical music enthusiasts in Kent.
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