Sources of Warren Parts in the Renfrew Organ

Warren built about 20 organs for the Famous Players chain of theatres and most of them went into their flagship theatres. There was a 2 manual 10 rank (2/10) organ in the Ottawa Capitol Theatre, which was designed by Thomas Lamb of New York City and opened on 8 November, 1920. It was reported the theatre cost $500,000 to construct, and had two notable architectural features; the Grand Foyer and a huge chandelier that graced the ceiling.

The largest Warren Theatre Organ was a 4/36 in the Capitol in Montreal whose console is now in the Casa Loma in Toronto on a large Wurlitzer Organ originally installed in Sheas Hippodrome theatre in Toronto then moved to Maple Leaf Gardens (the original Wurlitzer console was destroyed on the orders of the owner of the Maple Leafs Gardens, who hated the sound of the organ!)

There is one other surviving Warren Theatre Organ in Canada in Ancaster, Ontario, a 3/17 from the Capitol Theatre in Hamilton. It is barely playable and badly out of tune.

In the case of the Renfrew organ, the pipeworks are really church organ pipes revoiced on six inches wind (the Morton is on 10 inches).  Some of the larger offsets, such as the Diaphone and possible the Violone, look suspiciously Wurlitzer in origin.  It was probably not within the capabilities of Warren to make such pipework, although the chests appear to be Warrens work.

Some pipework in the Renfrew organ, mostly offsets, a regulator, and percussion parts came from the Starland (2M/7R),  Regent (specs unknown) and Capitol theatres in Winnipeg.

Not much is known about the Starland Theatre in Winnipeg which opened in 1911. We do know that it had a 2m/7r Warren organ, a 750 seat capacity and initially had a four piece orchestra.

Details of the console are lost forever, but we can probably re-construct the stoplist from the information on the crossbar switches. From the switchboard components that Herb Parks salvaged and the chests and rackboard mounts, we know that it was located in a single chamber and that the pipework was mounted on two two-rank chests and one three-rank chest. There were two regulators, a 48 x 56 for the seven ranks, and a smaller 34 x 36 which winded the offsets, each of which was furnished with roller blind valve boxes, only one of which survived. There was a single beater type Tremulant connected to the windlines or chests in an unknown manner.

The regulators were painted grey and the chests were black boxes, the tops of which were finished in natural  maple. Little else of the organ has survived. We assume most of it was gone when Herb Parks got into the theatre, and the few parts remaining were taken for spares.

There is a bit of the pipework left, most of the Vox, a few Strings, the Bourdon, and the Tuba offset, less one pipe. The eight foot open Diapason offset, the Bourdon, and the small regulator with its matching roller blind valve box are installed in the Renfrew organ and some of the chest tops and pipework may eventually be used as display pipes on the walls of the theatre. The remainder of the parts are currently in storage in Renfrew.

The Capitol Theatre in Winnipeg must have been a fairly large house (2580 seats) to have warranted such a large organ. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, the theatre opened on 14 February, 1921 and, like the Ottawa Capitol Theatre, was designed by Thomas Lamb of New York City.

The organ was a 3m/13r Warren, built in 1921. The console was a straight church type, with two stop rails for a total of 92 stops. The organ was poorly unified, which was typical of organs of its era. The console is extant, and is currently in storage in Renfrew with plans to eventually restore it to control its original pipework.

The Metropolitan Theatre in Winnipeg was designed by C. Howard Crane of Detroit (opened as the Allen in 1919). These two theatres were built back to back. In December 2000, the city decided to preserve the Met as a performing arts center and demolish the Capitol to provide parking spaces.

The Capitol organ was installed in two chambers, main and solo. There has been speculation (probably arising from the fact that the Ottawa Capitol used only a single chamber) that for some reason these two chambers were stacked one above the other on the same (left) side of the theatre. However, photos taken by Herb Parks before removing the organ fail to substantiate this assumption. Markings were found on both the switchboard assemblies and on the regulators indicating that there were chambers on both the east and west sides of the house. The windline seen to be passing through the ceiling of the chamber in one of the photos probably goes up and over the roof of the house, over the proscenium arch to the other side, a rather common feature of organ installations.

The main chamber contained a single nine rank chest, supported on 36-inch high stands at the ends. This chest was approximately six feet wide by 10 feet long, and 12 inches high. The pipework was made somewhat accessible for tuning via a walkway plank along one of the longer edges, but access to the central ranks must have been very difficult. The taller pipes were more or less supported by crude and insufficient frames of light wood which did little to prevent the heavier pipes from bending over under their own weight. The bottom of the chest had five access doors held in place with dozens of wood screws, fitted on the inside and sealed with felt tape. The wind was fed into the end with the largest pipes, through an opening about 6 x 10 inches, from the regulator which we surmise was located on the floor under the chest. The beater bar tremulant was fixed to the side opposite the tuning walkway near the end away from the wind feed, and was ducted inside the chest through a three inch metal duct to the inlet end near the wind supply opening. There were four cross baffles in the chest between each of the access panels and these extended down to about two inches from the chest bottom. Wiring was placed in slots cut into the chest tops and terminated in wooden connection blocks at the small pipe end of the top. The solo chest was of identical construction, but was four feet wide and had four ranks of pipework.

The two regulators were 48 x 56 inches, and fed both the large chests and the offsets. The blower was of a unique design, built entirely of wood except for the three stage rotors. It was built by Kinetic Blower Company, and is identical in design to the blower on the FotoPlayer which we have. It was powered by a five HP motor and developed about 800 CFM at 12 inches static water pressure. The outlet was 10 inches in diameter, and fed through a metal windline to a "T" connection which in turn fed the inlets of the roller blind valve boxes mounted to the regulators, one in each chamber. The offsets were winded from these regulators via small windlines, of three to four inch sizes, or through rectangular wooden lines of 6 x 10 inches.

The large offsets were installed inside the chambers, presumably against the back walls. The percussions (what there was of them), were just behind the shades. The chambers were not much higher than 15 feet necessitating the mitering of the Violone pipes at 14 feet.

The shades appear to have been of the church organ type, vertically mounted, consisting of a large number of blades of about eight inches wide by five feet in height, operated by a single whippletree type swell engine. There were likely two sets of shades mounted one above the other in each chamber, and from the wooden framing salvaged by Herb Parks, it seems that the shade openings were 10 feet high by about 10 feet wide. There was sufficient material saved to construct two of these openings. We inherited three swell engines, two were from the Capitol (marked east and west) and the other was from the Starland. Only about five of the shutter blades survived and the swell engines were lost in a barn fire where all of the Ottawa Valley Theatre Organ Society parts were stored prior to the move to Renfrew.

All of the chests and useable pipework have now been installed in Renfrew. The two large chests have been cut into their individual ranks to allow for a more suitable allocation to the chambers, and to fit into the rather constrained space available behind the theatre screen. Two of the large regulators have been utilized to wind all 16 foot offsets of the combined organ. The smaller regulator from the Starland has been used to provide 15 inch wind for the 16 foot Tuba offset and a Posthorn that is on our wish list. The original blower has been retained to wind the original pipework and has a new five HP motor.

Our Warren organ was one of the earliest built which accounts for the lack of a Kinura, Trumpet, etc, the straight console and the rather bizarre stoplist. Famous Players also bought organs from Casavant and others for their smaller houses. What is left of the Casavant from the Regent Theatre in Ottawa is in a church here, but is badly vandalized and unplayable.

Industrial Archaeology

Herb Parks also salvaged crossbar switches from the Starland and both the Winnipeg and Ottawa Capitols. Each set of crossbars was labelled with paper labels typed on a typewriter. The ones from the Starland were in blue ink, those of the Winnipeg and Ottawa Capitols were in black ink, in two distinct type faces. In this manner it was not at all difficult to identify to which organ the switches had originally belonged. A complete record of these switches has been compiled with full information on their origin, rank, compass, keyboard and location on the switchboard.

Using paint colours, wood finishes, faint pencilled labels, and so on, we have been able to determine that Little Bertha came from the Star, and Big Bertha from the Capitol. Interestingly the Warren and Morton Tibias and Concert Flutes are almost identical in scale, as are the Bourdons.  This information has been useful in matching the Bourdon offsets to the Tibia Concert Flute ranks in our hybrid organ.