One hundred fifteen years ago, Thomas Sanborn labored to complete his latest creation – a new pipe organ for Central Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis.  It was an important project for a congregation that was a rising star in the Protestant church.

 

Sanborn himself had come to Indianapolis in about 1875 to be part of a new company headed by William Horatio Clarke, a legendary nineteenth century musician and man of letters.  William H. Clarke & Co., would only survive in Indianapolis for a few years, but Sanborn would remain, purchasing the company, and building and maintaining organs until his retirement in about 1900. 

 

Central Avenue Church would become a pivotal congregation in the Third Great Awakening and the Social Gospel Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The congregation participated in the formation of several instruments of social reform and charity, including the Wheeler Mission and Methodist Hospital.  Its offspring congregation, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, continues to play an important role in the religious life of central Indiana.

 

While there continues to be debate among theologians and thoughtful scholars about the basic tenets of the Social Gospel movement, there can be no question that congregations such as that of Central Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church contributed greatly to the relief of suffering.  The social and societal challenges of the twentieth century were met in part because of the foundations laid by these churches.

 

Thomas Sanborn’s pipe organ would survive its builder, who died in 1903, and even the congregation for which it was built.  The Central congregation left the old building with its now silent pipe organ when it merged with another congregation in 2005.   Throughout the intervening generations, though, this sturdy musical instrument participated in the public and private observances of a congregation and a community.  Weddings, christenings, funerals, times of peace, times of war – it was a century of worship, celebration, and prayer filled with “every purpose under heaven.”

 

The organ itself is very much a child of nineteenth century organ building.  Clarke, his partner Steven Kinsley, and Sanborn himself were all trained in the Boston shop of E. & G.G. Hook, the largest and probably best-known of the nineteenth century American organ builders.

 

Although the craft of organ building was changing by 1892, Sanborn, who was over 70 years old, built his instrument according to the traditions of his training and, presumably, his own aesthetic.  It was structurally solid, with huge main windchests and mechanical (tracker) action.  Sanborn’s “Yankee ingenuity” was apparent in the relief pneumatics he patented the year he completed the Central organ – evidence of which can still be seen on the old windchests.

 

It would be several decades before tracker action was once again accepted in the organ world.  In the 1920s, many builders considered it obsolete.  So, in about 1925 the Seeburg Company, whose jukeboxes would later grace hamburger joints across America, was hired to electrify the action of the Central Avenue organ, and to replace the original water-powered wind apparatus with a modern electric blower.  Fortunately, Seeburg did not make any tonal alterations to the organ, leaving it with the sound that Thomas Prentiss Sanborn had originally imparted to it.

 

The instrument served in this form for another seven decades.  During those years, larger and flashier organs in the city would make Sanborn’s creation seem old and quaint.   Eventually, the venerable old organ began to develop mechanical problems.  Sadly, or perhaps happily for our generation, these problem coincided with changes in style and demographics that weakened the Central Avenue congregation, and left it financially unable to undertake a thorough renovation of the organ.  With the exception of one brief hymn a few years ago, the Central Avenue organ has been silent and abandoned for over ten years.

 

There is something particularly sad about a silent and abandoned pipe organ.  It is as if the mouth of each of its thousands of pipes has been quenched with an “Alleluia!” on its lips.  Collecting dust in the dark, it sits awaiting redemption or destruction.

 

A gracious lady in her 90^th year once told me that, inside, she still felt as if she was seventeen.  The soul of a pipe organ is in its pipes, and this sound does not change over time.  The mechanics of an organ my wear out over the generations, but the sound does not unless it is intentionally altered.  Although there have been some amateurish “improvements” to the Central organ, its pipework is in original condition, with relatively little damage apart from a very considerable coating of dirt and coal dust.  Its soul remains much as it was when Thomas Sanborn completed it 115 years ago.

 

This year, the Organ Historical Society held its national convention in Indianapolis.  We felt that, among the great and historic instruments that would be part of the convention itinerary, Thomas Sanborn’s organ at Central Avenue Church deserved to be heard. 

 

With the support of the Old Centrum Foundation, the owners of the building and organ, and the help of organ builder Michael Rathke, we undertook to make limited repairs on the Sanborn organ.  Although this work was not a full restoration of the instrument, we were able to make it functional so it could be heard again at last.

 

It was fitting that Dr. Charles Manning did the honors of playing the Central Avenue organ for the OHS convention.  Dr. Manning is on the music staff of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, the congregation that was originally started by Central Avenue Church.

 

Perhaps, being heard once more, Thomas Sanborn’s great instrument will never again be allowed to fall silent, and “Alleluias!” will continue to shout from its pipes.

 

Hear this Organ

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