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Pipe Organ Expansion ProjectWhen I took over as the organist at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church back in 2006, I wondered how I was going to deal with the parish's very small pipe organ. It had been originally installed in a Catholic church on the South Side in 1962, and was moved to Holy Trinity in 1982 to replace an electronic organ. I believe the 1962 Wicks organ originally served in a chapel, and was never meant to lead worship for an entire church. It was severely underpowered, and quite easy for a large congregation to over-sing it. However, I was very grateful that it was a 'real' pipe organ, not an electronic, so I figured I would count my blessings.
We aquired a 6 rank Austin windchest, which barely fit in the existing chamber. It did not come with the original pipes or rack boards. Ralph and I had to fabricate new rackboards to fit the ranks of pipes we aquired for the chest. What you see in the picture from left to right is:
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I found several proposals that previous organists had drafted for expanding the organ, but none had ever been funded. I decided this was a perfect opportunity to try my hand at organ building, since the church did not have enough money to retain the services of a professional builder. With the help of Ralph Armington, a retired professor of electrical engineering at Penn State, and more recently, Illinois Institute of Technology, we began the expansion project.