p. 30 | The Family Circle

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 2

The Family Circle.

A REMARKABLE ORGAN.

SOME of our readers remote from this city [New York] may need to be reminded of the following facts: The late A. T. Stewart, some years before his death, founded a town on a tract of land known as the Hempstead Plains, on Long Island. The town received the name of “Garden City,” and Mr. Stewart spent large sums of money in improving it.

Since his death there has been erected a magnificent cathedral, which is intended to be in some sort a memorial. Mrs. Stewart has made the completion and adornment of this church one of the chief objects of her life since the death of Mr. Stewart.

It is to the grand organ now in process of construction for the cathedral that we propose to devote this article. This instrument will be one of the largest in the world, and will be very remarkable in many respects. It is expected that it will cost about forty thousand dollars. Mr. Hilborne L. Roosevelt is the builder.

It will be placed in four different parts of the cathedral. The main body of the instrument will stand in the chancel, and the organist will sit there. At the west end of the building, in a tower directly behind a large stained-glass window, is a room in which a part of the organ will be placed, and connected with the chancel by electricity, like the organ built by Mr. Roosevelt in Grace Church, New York. The window will be opened and closed by electricity, controlled by the organist from the chancel, thereby making fine crescendo and diminuendo effects with the organ in the tower. Over the ceiling, about the center of the building, will be placed another part of the instrument, called the echo organ, which is to be played from the chancel by electricity. Underneath the chancel, in the chapel situated there, is a part of the organ, which is arranged so that it can be played in the chapel as well as from the chancel. Lastly, the large chimes, which hang in the tower, will be connected with the chancel by electricity, so that the organist can play them from the keys of the organ. The bellows will be operated by hydraulic engines, and the organist can, by simply turning on the water, have the whole instrument, including the chimes, at his command. Though this will be a mammoth instrument, and notwithstanding the great distance between many of its parts, the pressure necessary to play on the keys will be no greater than is used in playing upon a piano. This is due to the use of electricity, pneumatics, and hydraulics, which, combined, render it possible and practicable to construct such an instrument.

There will be four vox humanas (similar in construction to the celebrated one in Freiburg); one of these will be in the chancel, one in the tower, another over the ceiling, and a fourth one in the chapel beneath the chancel. All of these will be under the control of the organist in the chancel, and will be capable of crescendo and diminuendo effects. Certainly some beautiful and extraordinary combinations can be produced with their aid. In all, there will be one hundred or one hundred and twenty stops, the exact number not yet having been determined upon. The Boston Music Hall organ has eighty-four stops, the Cincinnati organ ninety-six, and the largest organ in the world, that in Albert Hall, London, one hundred and eleven. Five hydraulic engines will be needed. Quite a small Gramme magneto machine will furnish all the electricity needed. Where mechanical force is required, as in ringing bells or opening windows, compressed air will be used in an ingenious manner devised by Mr. Roosevelt.—Scientific News.