Industry | Musical instruments |
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Founded | 1850s |
Founder | Jacob Estey |
Defunct | c. 1961 [1] [2] |
Headquarters | |
Area served | Worldwide |
Products | Pump organs (Melodeon, American reed organ) Pipe organs, Theatre organs, Electronic organs |
The Estey Organ Company was an organ manufacturer based in Brattleboro, Vermont, founded in 1852 by Jacob Estey. At its peak, the company was one of the world's largest organ manufacturers, employed about 700 people, and sold its high-quality items as far away as Africa, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Estey built around 500,000 to 520,000 pump organs between 1846 and 1955.
Jacob Estey (1814–1890) born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, ran away from an orphanage to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he learned the plumbing trade. In 1835 he arrived in Brattleboro, Vermont at age 21 to work in a plumbing shop. He soon bought the shop, beginning a long career as a successful businessman. He died in 1890.
About 1850, Estey built a two-story shop in Brattleboro and rented it out to a small company that manufactured melodeons. When the renters ran short of cash, Estey took an interest in the business in lieu of rent, eventually becoming sole proprietor. Despite having no musical talent or skills as an inventor, Jacob Estey grew the company into a great success, giving up the plumbing business. [3] In 1855, Estey organized the first manufacturing company to bear his name, Estey & Greene—followed by Estey & Company, J. Estey & Company, Estey Organ Company—and finally, Estey Organ Corporation. In advertising copy the company claimed to have been building organs since 1846. [4]
Jacob Estey saw the manufacturing and sale of these instruments, later known as American reed organs, as a new business opportunity.
Estey started production in 1850 with about 75 instruments per year. [5] After a flood threatened his downtown factory, Estey built a new factory on Birge street. [5] The Birge street factory opened in 1870, producing 250 organs per month. [5] The company grew quickly, building its 100,000th organ in 1880, and its 200,000th organ in 1888. [5]
In 1892 the Estey company employed 500 men and built 1200 to 1500 organs per month. [5] In August 1892, Estey commemorated the making of its 250,000th organ with an elaborate ceremony which included fireworks, an orchestra, and prominent guests including state representative James Loren Martin and Vermont governor John B. Page. [6]
Over its more than one hundred years, the Vermont Estey company became one of the largest and best known manufacturer of reed organs in the world. It made more than 520,000 instruments, all labeled Brattleboro, Vt. USA. In 1901, Estey Organ Company began making pipe organs, and became one of the largest American pipe organ manufacturers. They built and sold more than 3,200 pipe organs across the U.S. and abroad. The company provided organs for many important locations, including New York City's Capital Theatre, the Sacramento, CA Municipal Auditorium, and Henry Ford's home in Dearborn, Michigan.
Also during the era of silent films, Estey made over 160 theatre organs. [14] [15]
Following World War II, Estey developed and manufactured electronic organs, joining a limited number of companies that manufactured all three types of organs—reed, pipe, and electronic. In the 1950s, Harald Bode joined Estey. He had been a pioneer in the research and development of electronic musical instrument since the 1930s, and had developed the Bode Organ in 1951. [16] At Estey, he helped develop the Estey Electronic Organ model S and AS-1 (1954), [17] [18] then served as a chief engineer and a vice-president of Estey during the late 1950s. [16]
Estey Organ Company Factory | |
Location | Birge St., Brattleboro, Vermont |
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Coordinates | 42°50′51″N72°34′4″W / 42.84750°N 72.56778°W |
Area | 5 acres (2.0 ha) |
Built | 1870 |
NRHP reference No. | 80000344 [19] (original) 06001232 (increase) |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | April 17, 1980 |
Boundary increase | January 9, 2007 |
The Estey Organ Company's main factory was located southwest of downtown Brattleboro, on the south side of Whetstone Brook between Birge and Organ Streets. At its height, the complex had more than 20 buildings, many of which were interconnected by raised walkways and covered bridges. Several of the buildings were built with distinctive slate siding, resulting in an architecturally unique collection of such structures in the state. [20] One of the buildings now houses the Estey Organ Museum; the entire surviving complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, both for its architecture, and as a major economic force in Brattleboro for many years. [19]
The Estey family had a long tradition of company leadership and community involvement, including residential development such as Esteyville; banking; town government; schools; fire protection; military units; churches; and Vermont state politics and government. Estey Hall on the campus of Shaw University is named after Estey, who contributed to the construction of the building. It was the first building in the entire U.S. dedicated for the higher education of African-American women.
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual.
A free reed aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound as air flows past a vibrating reed in a frame. Air pressure is typically generated by breath or with a bellows. In the Hornbostel–Sachs system, it is number: 412.13. Free reed instruments are contrasted with non-free or enclosed reed instruments, where the timbre is fully or partially dependent on the shape of the instrument body, Hornbostel–Sachs number: 42.
Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located about 10 miles (16 km) north of the Massachusetts state line at the confluence of Vermont's West River and Connecticut. With a 2022 Census population of 12,106, it is the most populous municipality abutting Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River.
Rodgers Instruments Corporation is an American manufacturer of classical and church organs. Rodgers was incorporated May 1, 1958 in Beaverton, Oregon by founders, Rodgers W. Jenkins and Fred Tinker, employees of Tektronix, Inc., of Portland, Oregon, and members of a Tektronix team developing transistor-based oscillator circuits. Rodgers was the second manufacturer of solid state oscillator-based organs, completing their first instrument in 1958. Other Rodgers innovations in the electronic organ industry include solid-state organ amplifiers (1962), single-contact diode keying (1961), reed switch pedal keying for pedalboards (1961), programmable computer memory pistons (1966), and the first MIDI-supported church organs (1986).
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments:
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The pump organ or reed organ is a type of organ using free-reeds that generates sound as air flows past the free-reeds, the vibrating pieces of thin metal in a frame. Specific types of pump organ include the harmonium using pressure system, suction reed organ using vacuum system, and the Indian harmonium; the historical types include the Kunstharmonium and the American reed organ; the earliest types include the physharmonica and the seraphine. The idea for the free reed was derived from the Chinese sheng through Russia after 1750, and the first Western free-reed instrument was made in 1780 in Denmark.
Mason & Hamlin is an American manufacturer of handcrafted grand and upright pianos, currently based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1854, it is one of two surviving American piano manufacturers from the "Golden Age" of pianos, although some smaller piano manufacturers have since started in the United States.
Chord organ is a kind of home organ that has a single short keyboard and a set of chord buttons, enabling the musician to play a melody or lead with one hand and accompanying chords with the other, like the accordion with a set of chord buttons which was originated from a patent by Cyrill Demian in 1829, etc.
Kimball International, Inc. is an American company which consists of furniture brands: Kimball, National, Interwoven, Etc., David Edward, D'Style and Kimball Hospitality. It is the successor to W.W. Kimball and Company, the world's largest piano and organ manufacturer at certain times in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Harald Bode was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.
Levi K. Fuller was an American businessman, military officer, and politician. A Republican, he served in the Vermont Senate from 1880 to 1882, as lieutenant governor from 1886 to 1888, and the 44th governor of Vermont from 1892 to 1894.
The Homestead–Horton Neighborhood Historic District encompasses a small turn-of-the-20th century neighborhood area in Brattleboro, Vermont. Located on a portion of Canal Street and all of Horton and Homestead Places, the district includes a significant number of Queen Anne Victorians, as well as the Italianate home of Jacob Estey, proprietor of the Estey Organ Company, one of the city's larger employers. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
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The Cable Company was an American manufacturer and distributor of pianos and reed organs that operated independently from 1880 to 1936.
Edwin Scott Votey was an American businessman, inventor, industrial designer, and manufacturer of pianos and organs. He worked in the organ field all his adult life and had over twenty patents. He invented or co-invented several inventions for World War I. One was a pilotless airplane that was going to be used to drop bombs on the enemy but was never used.
Hinners Organ Company was an American manufacturer of reed and pipe organs located in Pekin, Illinois. Established in 1879 by German-American John Hinners, the firm grew through several partners, becoming Hinners & Fink in 1881, Hinners & Albertsen in 1886, and Hinners Organ Company in 1902. In the 1920s Hinners established a subsidiary, the Illinois Organ Supply Company, which mass-produced parts for Hinners and other firms. Business declined in the 1930s due to the Great Depression, changing technology, and increasing competition. Hinners became a service company in 1936 and closed in 1942.
William E. Haskell was an American organ-builder and inventor born on November 29, 1865, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Charles S. Haskell, was also an organ-builder employed by the Roosevelt organ company, located in Philadelphia. At the age of 18, Haskell began working with his father, and around 1901, he established the William E. Haskell Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This organ-building firm was later acquired by Estey Organ Co., and Haskell became superintendent of the Estey pipe organ division, which was located in Vermont. He died there on May 13, 1927.
Dennis Waring is a multi-instrumentalist musician, teacher, historian and ethnomusicologist who was the Connecticut State Troubadour from 2003 through 2004. He wrote a history book on the Estey Organ Company titled Manufacturing the Muse: Estey Organs & Consumer Culture in Victorian America, based on his 1987 doctoral dissertation at Wesleyan University, where he was curator of a world instrument workshop while a graduate student.
R. S. Williams & Sons was musical instrument manufacturing company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario with a factory located in Oshawa, Ontario.
In 1959, Estey acquired Magna Electronics and made [F. Roy] Chilton the president of the Estey Corporation. Headquarters moved from the east coast to the Torrance where a line organs would be added to what was already in production under the Magnatone name. Some vague words were spoken in regard to keeping the Brattleboro operation going, but it seemed unlikely. Within a year or two, the 100 year legacy of Estey organ manufacturing finally came to an end, and the doors were closed for good.
Below is a very brief chronology of the Estey Organ Company. For a comprehensive examination of the company, we recommend the book, Manufacturing the Muse by Dennis Waring.(Waring 2002)
The Estey Perfect Melodeons", "Piano Style. / Nos. 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13. / Rosewood, Round Corners, Serpentine Mouldings.; also published as Figure 7 on Waring 2002 , p. 24
Boudoir Organ. -- Pipe Organ Top. / Rosewood, Round Corners, Serpentine Mouldings.; also published as Figure 9 on: Waring 2002 , p. 26
The J. Estey & Company "New Salon Organ"; also published as Figure 2 on: Waring 2002 , p. 3
Estey Cathedral Organ (with pipe top) ...; also published as Figure 8 on: Waring 2002 , p. 25
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