by William “Skip” Deegans
Shown in this 1942 photograph is the Greenbrier College for Women’s choir on the Carnegie Hall stage. In the background is the college’s two-manual concert pipe organ.
The organ was made by the Estey Organ Company and acquired by the Lewisburg Female Institute (LFI) in 1904. It was the 169th organ made by Estey. When LFI became the Lewisburg Seminary and Conservatory of Music (predecessor of Greenbrier College), Miss Nellie Lepha Brown, who had studied at the Chicago College of Music, was engaged to provide instructions on playing the organ for which the students paid an added charge. According to Charlie Goddard, Carnegie Hall’s Managing Director in 1987, the charge was to pay a laborer to pump the organ’s bellows before it was electrified.
During the renovation of Carnegie Hall in the 1990s, a decision was made not to restore the organ. Instead, it was given to the Christ Church United Methodist church in Charleston. With assistance from the Kanawha Organ Works it was restored and dedicated in 1997 and continues to be used in the church’s chapel. The original actions have been maintained, but the wind is produced electrically. However, the original bellows are stored at the church.
The Estey organ may well have been a gift of steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, who had already helped fund LFI’s Carnegie Hall, had a program of helping organizations buy organs, including many built by the Estey company. To qualify for Carnegie’s program, an organization had to raise part of the cost and provide assurance there would be as many people as possible to hear it. He loved the music an organ made and helped buy nearly 8,000 of them worldwide. He frequently would say, “O Music, sacred tongue of God, I hear thee calling, and I come.”
Sources: LFI catalogues, The Saga, Christ Church Methodist Church, The Charleston Gazette, Organ Historical Society, Estey Organ Museum.
