Say goodbye to Center City Macy's this weekend with Wanamaker Organ concert

[mahatmakanejeeves]

PHILADELPHIA
Say goodbye to Center City Macy's this weekend with Wanamaker Organ concert

The Macy's located on 1300 Market Street is set to close for good on Sunday, March 23, 2025

By Cherise Lynch • Published March 21, 2025 • Updated on March 21, 2025 at 6:04 pm

An all-day organ concert on Saturday will commemorate the final weekend that the Macy’s store in Center City, Philadelphia, will be open. NBC10’s Tim Furlong reports as everything is for sale.

It's an end to an era. … The Macy's in Center City Philadelphia is set to close its doors this weekend for good, but it's going out with a musical bang.

There will be a special sendoff featuring the legendary Wanamaker Organ on Saturday, March 22, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., where a parade of organists will perform hourly recitals.

According to event organizers, the concert is free to attend.

{snip}

Behind the scenes at Philadelphia's iconic Wanamaker Organ before Macy's closes

CBS Philadelphia
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2025
Philadelphia's iconic Wanamaker Organ is protected, but questions about its future remain as Macy's prepares to close its Center City store this weekend. Reporter Joe Holden got a look behind the scenes of the iconic instrument.

CBS Philadelphia
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Merry Christmas from the old Wanamaker Department Store Pipe Organ!

[oberle]

1. Organ recitals

I have been to several of the organ recitals, the last time when Daniel Roth played, maybe 10 years or so ago. This is such a shame. I hope the organ can go somewhere else. It is important historically.

[defacto7]

2. As an organist and organ curator in retirement

this is very sad. I hope the organ can be preserved in it's present environment. Pipe organs are 50% the building in which they are built. You can't move them and retain their character and this organ is ultra massive. It can't be anywhere else.

[oberle]

3. The organ was built.....

....originally for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. After the fair, it was in storage until 1909 when Wanamaker bought the organ and had it installed in the store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker_Organ

[defacto7]

4. I understand. But in rebuilding, it was redesigned for this building and environment

which means, re-voiced and winded to the building it has settled into for well over a hundred years. That also means it has been adjusted and refurbished constantly for that same amount of time to make it what it is. There's no way to know what it sounded like in 1904 but it wasn't likely anything like it sounds now. Moved elsewhere, it would be a different organ again. It would have to be. That's the way pipe organ curating works. You can put pipes anywhere and call it an organ. That doesn't mean it's a good one.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. I've Heard That, Too

A pipe organ at the old grand movie house where I grew up got moved.
It was said that after it got moved (somewhere in Ohio, I think) many of the stops didn't sound the same.
I'm guessing things like flute or reed stops might be ok, but diapason would lack the roar.
I was an altar boy at a cathedral when I was a kid. They had an awesome pipe organ there. Over 5k pipes. Cost $54,000 when it was installed in 1953.
The blowers in the subbasement were the size of a small car!
I got to play it a few times. It was quite a rush when I was 10 or 11 years old!

[defacto7]

6. It's nice to hear from a pipe organ enthusiast with a story.

My "office" is an 80 rank, 5000 pipe self-flagellating monster tracker with no respect for it's curator. There's always work. One of the largest organs in the world, ~300 ranks, is just across town and it's an utter disaster because the institution just wanted a big organ in their hall without consideration that the organ IS the hall. Carpet, 12,000 (I think) padded seats, a recessed stage among other things has turned it into an expensive calliope. They even mic it. The organists from there come to our Cathedral to perform a concert once a year because ... it's a better organ. But it's not the organ itself but the building it's in that makes it a powerful musical instrument.
We're starting a full rebuild project that will cost about 2 million and expand it to 90 ranks. The cost of pipe organs has gone up a bit since '53.
I remember playing a 100 rank Casavant organ when I was about 11. While playing a piece, I pulled the 32' Bombarde pedal reeds and it about blew me off the bench. The sheer power, the floor shaking an octave below a piano, I knew I was in it for the long haul.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I'm Really A Piano Player

(And guitar).
But my dad had a Hammond organ so I understood the difference between the 2 instruments. They're not meant to be played the same and I learned that as a little kid. Some luck there.
I was amazed at the amount of comfortable resistance of they keystrokes compared to an electric organ.
Is that because all the levers and rods are wood? Or because of pressure against the valves those levers are moving?

[defacto7]

8. The touch of an organ keyboard are as varied as keyboards get.

That can be for many reasons. There are different types of actions. The 3 main ones are electro-pneumatic where, when the key is pushed it connects a DC current to a magnet that lifts a small metal disk which equalizes the pressure between the outside air and the inside of a stopper causing it to be blown aside so air can flow from the pressurized wind chest up into the pipe. This is probably the most common action. The second is called a tracker action where the finger that pushes the key is the force that actually pulls the stopper under the pipe open by way of a long wooden track that goes from the key directly to it. That is the best action, in my opinion but is more problematic to make work properly for the player and every stop or coupler added puts more weight on the key. The third is the cheapest and least satisfactory called an electric action. Push the key and a solenoid activates a valve on the pipe. It rarely feels right. So, to answer your question, it all depends on the design, but that design can be good or bad. It's complicated but it makes each pipe organ unique. Believe it or not, that's the short answer.