Our November Preservation Cafe provided an up-close — and inside! — look at the newly restored 1891 pipe organ at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
Attendees were invited to climb the narrow, twisting staircase to the organ loft to see reinstallation work in progress and examine the beautiful wooden exterior case, inner workings and towering pipes along with the manuals (also known as keyboards) and pedalboard.
The historic instrument is one of perhaps 200 surviving organs built by Boston-based Hook & Hastings in the 19th Century. Fewer still are in largely original condition like the one at St. Joe’s, a Gothic Revival church built of red Seneca stone by the German immigrant community on Third Street Northeast just steps from the U.S. Capitol grounds.
The St. Joe’s organ has endured generations of wear and environmental changes the original builders could not have anticipated, such as extreme swings in humidity levels and generally drier air from modern heating and cooling systems that result in cracking and splitting of organ parts.
By the time Music Director and Organist Maria Balducci arrived in 2020, the organ was increasingly unreliable. Notes would continue sounding after a key was released. Deteriorating components led to wind leaks and other trouble, she said.
“The wind pressure was never big enough to really play with its full stops,” said Balducci, who frequently found herself climbing inside the organ, sometimes scaling the 130-year-old ladder that came with it, to find and fix problems.
The need for maintenance kept growing, and the long-term survival of the organ was at risk.
Enter David E. Wallace & Son Pipe Organ Builders of Gorham, Maine. With guidance from an expert in Baltimore, David Storey, the parish reached out to several organ builders and ultimately chose Wallace & Son, which had experience with organs of the same era and big enthusiasm for the project, which took more than a year and cost around $600,000. St Joe’s has used a smaller 1875 Hook & Hastings organ throughout the renovation.
“We were overjoyed,” said Nick Wallace, the eponymous “& Son,” to find that an 1891 organ had escaped alterations, however well-intentioned, that alter an instrument’s historic craftsmanship.
He described the dismantling of the organ and its transportation to and from Maine. But he focused on the months of work to fully clean and repair the organ, restore the feeder bellows and handpump, restore and repaint the towering pipes, add a trombone pedal stop, refinish the exterior case and much more. He said the project was joyful and deeply meaningful, choking up as he explained its impact on himself and the restoration team.
Some of the work required making new tools to do repairs. Wooden parts that needed replacement were recreated from salvaged wood in some cases and new wood in others. Many types of wood were used in the organ’s original construction, including poplar, cedar and cherry.
Nick’s father, David, repainted the soaring facade pipes by hand, recreating their historic patterns and colors. “What we see now is as close as possible to the original design,” Nick said.
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