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 |
Subsidiaries | Estey Piano Co., Welte Mignon Corp., Welte Organ Co., North American Discount Co., Estey-Welte Securities Co., Eswell Realty Corp., Magna Electronics Co. ( Magnatone ) [1] |
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. Estey also produced pianos, made at the Estey Piano Company Factory in New York City.
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.
In 1926 another company used the name Estey. It was the Estey-Welte Corporation, and began when George Gittins, owner of the entirely separate Estey Piano Company (The Bronx, NY), [12] acquired the American assets of the Welte Company seized during World War I. That year, Estey-Welte acquired the Hall Organ Company of West Philadelphia and a new built six-floor building at 695 Fifth Avenue as showrooms and salesrooms. This became the company's home, and the offices of the Welte Mignon Studios and the other subsidiary companies—including the Estey Piano Company, the Welte Mignon Corporation, the Welte Organ Company, the North American Discount Company, the Estey-Welte Securities Company, and the Eswell Realty Corporation. [13] In 1926 Estey-Welte formed The Welte-Mignon Studios of Florida, Inc. in Palm Beach. [14] The Estey-Welte company was forced into receivership in 1927 after a flurry of unabashed stock manipulations stemming from the Philadelphia brokerage house of Frank C. McCown, eventually being revived as the Welte-Tripp Organ Co. of Sound Beach, CT.
Over its more than one hundred years, the Vermont Estey company became the largest and best known manufacturer of reed organs in the world.[ citation needed ] 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. [15] [16]
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. [17] At Estey, he helped develop the Estey Electronic Organ model S and AS-1 (1954), [18] [19] then served as a chief engineer and a vice-president of Estey during the late 1950s. [17]
Fletcher Music Centers purchased the Estey Organ company name in 1989, the oldest name in the home organ industry, to continue the tradition of quality and musicianship. Fletcher Music Centers subsequently produced several models of home organs, including the Discovery, Freedom, Liberty, Patriot and Americana. The models included a lifetime free lesson program. They are selling these instruments exclusively through their chain of retail stores. Fletcher Music Centers and the Estey Organ Company corporate office is in Clearwater, Florida. In 2019 the brand was revived for a series of entry level instruments manufactured in China for sale through the dealer network left without new product after the demise of Lowrey.
In 2021, Marco Mendez was commissioned by Fletcher Music to create the MK-5000. The MK-5000 represents the newest and state-of-the-art model made from one of the largest manfaturures of electronic organs in China (Ringway) with a custom made cabinet by Orla in Italy. This instrument will be released in the United States late in the Fall of 2023.
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 [20] (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. [21] 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. [20]
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. Fletcher Music Centers continued the tradition of community involvement by helping fund a music therapy wing at All Children's Hospital located in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Lyon & Healy Harps, Inc. is an American musical instrument manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois and is a subsidiary of Salvi Harps. Today best known for concert harps, the company's Chicago headquarters and manufacturing facility contains a showroom and concert hall. George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy began the company in 1864 as a sheet music shop. By the end of the 19th century, they manufactured a wide range of musical instruments—including not only harps, but pianos, guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and various brass and other percussion instruments.
A player piano, also known as a pianola, is a self-playing piano with a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action using perforated paper or metallic rolls. Modern versions use MIDI. The player piano gained popularity as mass-produced home pianos increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sales peaked in 1924 and subsequently declined with improvements in electrical phonograph recordings in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction, brought by radios, contributed to a decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
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.
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. Piano rolls, like other music rolls, are continuous rolls of paper with holes punched into them. These perforations represent note control data. The roll moves over a reading system known as a tracker bar; the playing cycle for each musical note is triggered when a perforation crosses the bar.
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:
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments from Germany for resale in the United States. Wurlitzer enjoyed initial success, largely due to defense contracts to provide musical instruments to the U.S. military. In 1880, the company began manufacturing pianos and eventually relocated to North Tonawanda, New York. It quickly expanded to make band organs, orchestrions, player pianos and pipe or theatre organs popular in theatres during the days of silent movies.
The pump organ or reed organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the American reed organ, the Indian harmonium, 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 a piano manufacturer based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1854, they also manufactured a large number of pump organs during the 19th century.
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.
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte (1807–1880) in 1832.
Kimball International 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.
Richard Simonton (1915–1979), also known under the pseudonym Doug Malloy, was a Hollywood businessman and entrepreneur, known for his involvement in the Hollywood community, his rescue of the steamboat Delta Queen, his work in preserving the work of musicians in the Welte-Mignon piano rolls and for founding the American Theatre Organ Society. Among piercing enthusiasts he is also known as an early pioneer of the contemporary resurgence in body piercing.
Sohmer & Co. was a piano manufacturing company founded in New York City in 1872. Sohmer & Co. marketed the first modern baby grand piano, and also manufactured pianos with aliquot stringing and bridge agraffes, as well as Cecilian "all-inside" player pianos and Welte-Mignon-Licensee reproducing pianos. Sohmer pianos were owned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and composers Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. Sohmer is now a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Music Corporation in Korea.
Harald Bode was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.
Levi Knight Fuller was the 44th governor of Vermont from 1892 to 1894.
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.
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.
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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