Comments from Michael_Loris

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Michael_Loris
Michael_Loris commented about Renaissance Theatre on Aug 22, 2014 at 7:07 pm

The WurliTzer now at the Renaissance Theatre is Opus 2022. Opus 997 was a Style B of two manuals and four ranks, built for an “unidentified new theatre” in Lorain, Ohio and shipped on 14 February 1925. Source: The WurliTzer Pipe Organ / An Illustrated History, David L. Junchen and the ATOS, 2005, p. 693 and p. 648, resp.

A reasonably accurate history of the Ohio/Renaissance Theatre can be found here: http://www.mansfieldtickets.com/content/view/67

The 1928 Kimball in the Ohio was apparently sold to a girls' school in Michigan, then scrapped. Although David Junchen and others list the organ as a “3/9”, notes I took in 1957 show 12 eight-foot stops on the Great. Two of these were probably synthetic, so there is a possibility the organ actually had ten ranks of pipes. If anyone has the complete stoplist/specifications of the Kimball, I would like to compare notes.

Two more Kimball organs listed for Mansfield are a 1916 two-manual “with two-rank Echo” for the Grand Theatre, and a 1923 two-manual for the Majestic Theatre. Source: Encylopedia of the American Theatre Organ, Volume I, David L. Junchen, p. 256. Comments found on the Internet about these two theatres are all over the place, and someone local needs to spend time doing a bit of serious research at the Mansfield Public Library to clarify their history.

Michael_Loris
Michael_Loris commented about Madison Theatre on Aug 22, 2014 at 6:23 pm

The correct address of the Madison Theatre was 32-34 Park Avenue West, not “Park Street”.

The WurliTzer organ that burnt in 1929 was Opus 1822, a Style B X Sp of two manuals and five ranks; it was shipped from the factory on 23 December 1927. Source: The WurliTzer Pipe Organ / An Illustrated History, David L. Junchen and the ATOS, 2005, page 681).

I knew the Madison Theatre fairly well as its paperboy in the early 1950s, and there was no organ in the new (1930-1931) building.