After a decades-long absence, Plaza Theater organ returning to ‘home’
The return of the Plaza Theater’s circa-1927 Robert Morton theater organ to Brownsville was the result of an act of generosity by Jay Smith, a retired nuclear engineer from Baldwin who has owned the venerable organ for the past 40 years. Jay and his father, Louis, reassembled the organ in Louis Smith’s Baldwin home in 1963 after purchasing it from the estate of a Mount Washington organ repairman.
They enjoyed playing it for many years and kept it in good repair. When Louis died last summer, Jay made up his mind that this organ belonged in the place where it had entertained so many generations of youngsters and adults – Brownsville.
Jay set his plan in motion by contacting Lou Orslene, the executive director of the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation (BARC). After several discussions, BARC agreed to accept the organ on Brownsville’s behalf, and, in late 2002, ownership of the organ was officially transferred to BARC.
A timetable for the moving of the organ to Brownsville was established, and, in April of this year, Jay began the painstaking process of disassembling the organ.
He constructed long, shallow wooden boxes in which the more fragile organ pipes could be laid and safely moved without dents or damage. By mid-May, the disassembly and packing process was complete and it was time for the next step – making arrangements to move the organ to Brownsville.
One item that was needed was a large panel truck capable of carrying the organ’s console, its heavy blower assembly, specially constructed boxes containing the delicate pipes and other parts of the complicated musical instrument.
I suggested to Orslene, who was coordinating the effort to bring the organ to Brownsville, that this project might be one with which the Brownsville Fire Company No. 1 (North Side) might be glad to help. The fire company has a large, closed panel truck that it uses to transport firefighting equipment – just the ticket for moving a 75-year-old pipe organ.
North Side fire chief Clark Sealy enthusiastically agreed to assist with the project, adding that the company’s firemen would provide whatever manpower was needed to accomplish the move. E-mails flew between Smith and Orslene, as they estimated how many trips would be needed in order to move all of the parts of the organ from Baldwin to Brownsville.
In the end, their projection of two trips was one short.
Moving day was Sunday, June 8. At seven o’clock that morning, I met Lou Orslene, Clark Sealy, and Clark’s son, junior firefighter Jordan Sealy, at the North Side fire hall. I rode with Lou, who had Jay Smith’s written driving directions, and Clark and Jordan followed in North Side’s big red panel truck. A 40-minute drive on foggy routes 43 and 51 brought us to Louis Smith’s house.
The modest suburban house has an integral double garage in the rear. A sloping concrete driveway leads downward along the left side of the house to a concrete pad next to the garage. That is where we found a smiling Jay Smith, who had just removed a large ground floor window through which the organ’s console would have to be taken out of the house.
Clark expertly backed the big truck down the narrow driveway between the house and the neighbor’s fence. After introductions were made, we sized up the task ahead of us. As might be expected of an engineer, Jay had preplanned the entire enterprise and fabricated some equipment to ease the move. Forty years earlier, when he and his late father had moved the organ from its previous location in Mount Washington, it had been necessary to remove the console through a window and maneuver it down a 12-foot high ladder to the ground. Fortunately, the window Jay had just removed from the ground-floor recreation room was only about three feet above the lawn.
Our primary concern was to avoid damaging the antique console as it came through the window frame. Jay had measured the size of the opening.
“We should have a little room to spare, but not much,” he declared. As it turned out, we had about an inch clearance on the sides and a few inches on top. In order for the console to be level as it traveled through the window opening, it would be necessary to raise the console three feet above the basement floor
Jay had built a portable wooden ramp, two feet wide and eight feet long, fashioned of two by six lumber. We placed one end of the ramp on the window sill and the other on the basement floor, then everyone lifted the heavy console onto the inclined ramp. To level the console, several men lifted the lower end of the ramp until it was level with the window sill, then supports were quickly placed under the end of the ramp.
Now the ramp was level and ready to be slid through the window with the console on it. Two men went outside and stood on the lawn to receive the ramp and console. We slid the ramp and console through the window frame, not stopping until only a few inches of the ramp still rested on the sill. Supports were then placed on the lawn under the outside end of the ramp. After a breather, four men picked up the console off the horizontal ramp, carried it over to the truck, and carefully placed it in the center of the truck’s cargo compartment..
The most nerve-wracking job was out of the way. The next task required brute strength – moving the heavy blower assembly, which forces air through the organ’s pipes, from the double garage to the truck. We placed 1-inch diameter metal pipes under the front and rear of the blower assembly, then slowly rolled the unit out of the garage along the concrete pad until we were near the rear opening of the truck. We placed one end of Jay’s useful ramp on the truck’s bumper, the other end on the concrete pad, and with a lot of pushing and grunting wrangled the blower up the ramp and into the truck.
Next we loaded the four shallow 2-by-8 foot wooden boxes that Jay had built to protect the most delicate organ pipes. After they were safely in the truck, we carefully placed the long wooden pipes that provide the organ’s deepest bass notes into the vehicle.
The big truck was nearly full. We did not want to position any part of the organ in such a way that the cargo could shift. Determined to avoid damaging any part of the organ during the move, we decided not to load any more for this first trip. We arranged to return later that evening and headed for Brownsville.
We arrived in Brownsville around noon, where firemen Jack Lawver, Wally Bakewell, and Tom Wardman helped us unload the cargo into a street-level storage area in the Flatiron building. Before dispersing to join our families for Sunday afternoon activities, Lou, Clark and I agreed to meet again at the fire hall at 6 p.m. for a return trip to Baldwin.
That evening we journeyed back to Baldwin, accompanied this time by fireman Chuck Smith. We loaded the big truck with more wooden and metal organ pipes, a bass drum, a long wooden xylophone, several mysterious wooden boxes bristling with wires and electrical connections, and other paraphernalia. The truck filled quickly again with some large pieces yet to be loaded . With space at a premium, we decided that a third trip later in the week would be necessary, and we prepared to leave for Brownsville.
Rain pelted down during the trip to Brownsville, but by the time we reached the Flatiron building at 8:45 p.m., the rain had let up. With the help of volunteers Dave Ferguson and John Patress, we transferred the cargo into the storage area. As darkness fell, three-fourths of the organ was now in its new temporary home at the Flatiron Building. A third journey to Baldwin would complete the job.
So far we have had good fortune in our effort to return the Plaza organ to Brownsville. Two years ago, we did not even know that the Plaza organ still existed. Now Jay Smith has not only donated the organ to Brownsville, he has also volunteered to lend a big hand in re-installing it here. Just one question remains to be answered: where can this organ be installed in Brownsville?
Many years ago Louis Smith visited Brownsville and took photos of the Plaza Theater. Perhaps he was considering returning the organ someday to the scene of its greatest glory. But on his final trip here with his son Jay six years ago, Louis must have realized that the decaying theater could no longer provide a safe home to its former pipe organ.
So where can the Plaza Theater’s Robert Morton pipe organ be installed so that it can be played in Brownsville once more? Ideally the organ should be installed in a large room that could showcase its great sound. However, for many years it was played in a suburban home’s recreation room with a ceiling height of less than 8 feet, so a large hall is not absolutely essential.
Brownsville has no shortage of buildings with large rooms, but most of these rooms are in unheated empty buildings inhabited only by rodents or birds. What is needed is an occupied building whose owners or tenants are willing to provide a home for this great musical treasure from Brownsville’s past. That is the type of place that Lou Orslene and Jay Smith are hoping to find in Brownsville. There are several organizations in town whose buildings could offer such a home.
This project has come so far, with so many people trying to make it happen, that we certainly don’t want it to fall short of its goal now. It is our hope that members of one of our hometown organizations will read this story and urge their group to extend open arms to this wonderful Brownsville historical gem and say, “Welcome home.”
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Glenn Tunney may be contacted at glenatun@hhs.net or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, PA 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to Mark O’Keefe (Managing Editor – Day), 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, Pa. Or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com . All past articles are on the Web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/