By Barbara Tucker
The Tonawanda News
North Tonawanda, NY — Sometimes, if one isn’t enough, two may be better.
In the case of the Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda, the volunteers on the organ work crew decided several years ago that if the theater ever had room for a museum, a working model of a theater organ would be just the thing to have in it.
So over time, as the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ went from its original 11 sets of pipe in 1926 to about 20 sets of pipes, it became obvious that the organ had been overbuilt.
“The original organ that came from the Wurlitzer Company was smaller but different people who were in charge added and added more pipes,” Don Lange, head of the organ crew said.
Lange explained that when Clark Wilson, an experienced and renowned restorer of pipe organs, was hired two years ago, he was asked to return the organ to Wurlitzer factory standards, the type of sound that it would have had when it was new.
Wilson noted that over time, there was a lot of deterioration and changing of the pipes and a lot of dirt in the instrument. He said in a News article in 2008 that a number of things in the organ were barely functional, something he corrected as he restored the organ.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people who come to the theater don’t know a thing about the (pipe) chambers,” Lange said. “They just see the organ playing.”
Over the years, as the organ was changed, once making it digital then later restored by Wilson, there were parts left over.
“Here (at the Riviera) we’re a bunch of pack rats,” Bob Sieben, an organ crew member laughed. “We kept all the left over parts as well as a keyboard from a piano being dismantled. Don’s (Lange) been working on the keyboard here and at home, cleaning it up.”
What to do with all the parts?
Why, build a demonstration organ, of course.
“The new organ will be like an original organ, only smaller,” Lange said. “When it’s finished we want to install it in the atrium of the new building adjacent to the theater.”
There will be two sets of pipes, the largest, an eight-foot pipe in order to get the organ through the doors.
In the basement of the theater, the men, including Al LaTeste, Andy Wos and Bob Stratiff, clean and rebuild items such as the rack board which holds the pipes in place, the smallest of which is a one-inch pipe.
Then, of course, there’s the wind chest, which when an organ key is pressed, opens the valve below the pipe and blows air into the pipe to make the sound everyone enjoys.
“Interestingly,” Sieben said, “Robert Hope-Jones is considered the father of the pipe organ. He worked for the Wurlitzer company but was a perfectionist. He wanted to build perfect organs and the company wanted organs built for profit. At the end, Hope-Jones committed suicide and is buried in Elmlawn Cemetery.”
Sieben himself is an expert on the history of pipe organs and designed the scale model of the organ the group is building.
When the organ is finished, Plexiglas will be installed in some of the mechanics, making it possible for visitors to play the keyboard and see just how it works.
“The platform is ready,” Lange said. “Eventually we’ll have to find a place to put it together. The intention is not so much that it will be played, but as an educational tool. And,” he added, “our intention is that it last as long as the 1926 organ we have now.”
