Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

Inwood - Manhattan, NY

 

1928 Austin Organ Company

Opus # 1591

II/6

Stoplist

Exterior     Interior     Console     Organ

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church of Inwood - Manhattan, NY is experiencing an amazing revival.  After a low of 8 parishioners in 1986, the regular Sunday worship service now sees approximately 50 people.  The church building itself received Landmark status due to its famous architect.  Thus they have been able to repair the leaky roof among other important capital campaign improvements.          We were first called in shortly before Easter 2006 to evaluate the organ and hopefully get it to play for Easter services.  What we found was an Austin that, although thankfully unaltered, was not receiving proper and timely maintenance.  We came across a "glove" being used to stop a cipher and a blower wired in reverse, among other oddities.          The main goal was to make the organ playable for Easter since the next stage of our proposal would take care of the cleaning and more in-depth repairs.  We started by straightening out the tangled wire mess inside the console while repairing damaged console pneumatics.  We restored many of the original Austin electro-pneumatic valve action components and corrected multiple wiring errors in the chest.  The blower wiring was corrected and air rushed into the Austin "Universal Chest".          Now usable, we needed to make it playable.  Since the console had not been used for quite some time, many of the contacts needed exercising.  With the major problems taken care of, we completed a full tuning.  The organ sounded wonderful especially considering it was unplayable just two days prior to our visit.          The next stage of the work will begin in January 2007 and everyone is excited about the progress with the organ and the church's ongoing renovation and revitalization!