Today we visited the Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa AZ, the
performance was wonderful experience and the pizza was very good. $8.00 each
for a pizza buffet and an hour of the music.
Here is the description from their website.
Organ Stop’s
Wurlitzer theatre organ was built for the Denver Theatre and was installed in
1927. The organ was used regularly until the early 1930s. With the advent of
the talking picture and the 1930s depression, the organ was rarely heard. It
was silenced when a fire in the auditorium caused extensive damage to the
organ’s relay.
In the theatre, the organ was a style 260, having a
three-manual console and 15 ranks/sets of pipes. Organ Stop purchased the
instrument in the early 1970s and undertook the mammoth task of rebuilding the
instrument. Several additions were made to the instrument by acquiring parts
from other ill-fated Wurlitzers. The resulting 23 rank organ was installed in
our original facility in 1975.
The building’s design is expressly for the enjoyment of
patrons, with the organ installed in four chambers at one end of the
restaurant. Forty-three-foot ceilings provide unparalleled acoustics. The
console is “presented” on an 8000-pound rotating hydraulic elevator. Many of
the percussions (such as the xylophones, glockenspiels, drums, etc.) are
installed in the dining room for greater audience appeal.
The enlargement and improvement of this instrument has been
an ongoing project… In 1997, a larger four manual consoles were added to the
instrument. The new console is an exact replica of a “Fox Special” French case,
ornamented to match the famous Brooklyn Paramount Wurlitzer. This is the
largest console type ever designed and built by Wurlitzer. Through the years,
several rare sets of pipes have been added to the organ, including a massive
set of 32′ wood diaphones (visible from the front of the building). As of today,
the organ has nearly 6000 pipes. The massive quantities of wind required for
operation are provided by four huge turbine blowers (visible
from the outside of the building in the blower complex). The resulting
instrument boasts 82 ranks, 17 tuned percussions and innumerable traps and
effects. It is not only the largest Wurlitzer theatre organ in the world,
it’s the largest Theatre Pipe Organ of any type to ever be assembled!!!




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