Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2005-02-26 - Identified from company publications as edited and expanded in <i>The Hook Opus List 1829-1935</i>, ed. William T. Van Pelt (Organ Historical Society, 1991). -Database Manager
2013-05-24 - updated through information developed by Stephen Pinel for the 2013 OHS Vermont Convention -- Rebuilt by Ryder as his Opus 114 in 1883. Later relocated to Barre, VT Congregational Church. -Database Manager
2020-09-08 - This was the first known pipe organ acquired by the New England Conservatory, founded by the iconoclastic Eben Tourjee in February, 1867. The school was located in rooms rented from the Boston Music Hall, and contemporary accounts describe them as "dingy and shabby". Behind the second-floor balcony of the main hall was a large anteroom, variously described as a ballroom, assembly hall, and recital hall. It was here that E. & G.G. Hook & Hastings installed a 3-manual multim-im-parvo teaching/recital instrument. While NEC taught students of both sexes, it was primarily a preparatory conservatory for women. In the day, the confined area and alleys surrounding the Music Hall on Tremont Street were considered unsafe after dark, and especially at a time when travel by unaccompanied ladies at any time of day, but especially at night, just wasn't done. The school seemed perennially cash-strapped and it was 16 years until the scnool could afford to move to larger property. Tourjee envisioned a self-contained campus, which would be suitable academic space plus a residential facility for the female students. This would provide a safe environment for the women students sheltered from the city streets. In 1883, the old St. James Hotel became available at an affordable price, and became the new conservatory building, but mortgaged to the hilt. (This building gained noteriety as the St. Elsewhere hospital in the 1990s television drama of the same name.) The Hook was moved to an undisclosed space at St. James, perhaps the Dining Hall where faculty and student recitals occured, by Geo. H. Ryder. Too small as an adequate performance venue, land was acquired adjacent to the hotel and the 550-seat Sleeper Hall was added in 1886. The organ was moved to a dedicated area at the back of the stage platform, again by Ryder. Contemporary accounts say the organ was increased with the addition of a bass stop suited to the acoustics of the new and larger hall. Examination of the organ now in Barre, Vermont, in inconclusive whether this addition is the open wood Diapason 16', or the open wood Flute 8'-- both show mixed evidence of age and provenance. The is nothing left of the case at Barre, so it is impossible to determine if it was original to the Hook installation at the Music Hall, or something reworked later for installation in Sleeper Hall. The photo of the original installation in Barre shows a case that matches in close detail, an engraving of the organ as installed at Sleeper Hall. The two odd and large single-pipe flats certainly suggest a nod to the similar but more elegant flats in the main Hall's imposing Herter Bros. case. Sleeper Hall was a compromise- especially that it was not large enough to accommodate an orchestra which the school was desperate to create. When the large Walcker was swept unceremoniously off the stage of the Boston Music Hall, it was given to NEC. As usual, plans for its use were grander than the miniscule funds available. It was planned to build a large performance hall with a stage large enough to accommodate a full orchestra-- a true symphony concert hall. The Walcker would be rebuilt as a grand 5-manual colossus, which would be the largest concert organ of its kind in the country. The reality was the money was not forthcoming, the organ was quietly sold off at an auction to Edward Searles, and shortly thereafter the Hook was replaced in Sleeper Hall with a more modern and up to date instrument of similar size. Finally in 1903, an generous gift from Eben Jordan financed a new building, across the street from the Opera House and Symphony Hall (creating a musical arts powerhouse on Huntington Avenue), and Jordan Hall contained an acoustically fine concert hall with a large electric-action Hutchings installed at the rear of the stage. The presence of a "Bellows Signal" in the stop jamb indicates the organ was hand-pumped during its early years at the conservatory. It was fitted with a water motor after the move to the St. James, which must have seemed an unimaginable luxury. In spite of Tourjee being an early (and severely derided) proponent favoring the adoption of the "Parisian Concert Pitch" of A435 as a universal standard in the U.S.-- and in fact was the pitch of the giant Walcker when it arrived to adorn the hall adjacent to the Hook, but which was savagely cut to raise the pitch to A450 ca. 1870-71-- the Hook was installed at A450, by then the standard pitch in Boston and much of the eastern United States. The pitch of the Hook was lowered to A435 ca. 1887-1893 ostensibly by Woodberry & Harris. The "International Pitch" of A435 finally became an adopted standard in the United States in the late 1880s (the Hooks even offered the choice of A450 or A435 in 1888). The Hook was replaced in Sleeper Hall by a 3-manual electric-action Farrand & Votey No. 804 in 1896, (along with a small studio teaching organ also with electric action, No. 805), at which time the Hook was moved by Geo. H. Ryder to the First Congregational Church in Barre, Vermont, where the organ exists in altered condition. The case was heavily altered to fit the new location having a lower ceiling, and the action and layout gives the appearance of being modified to fit the new chamber. It has received periodic minor alterations in the 100 intervening years since. The present status of the organ is unknown and imperiled, as the church unwisely chose in 2019 to replace it with a second-hand electro-pneumatic organ of a quality not matching that of the Hook. If the organ does not find a new home quickly, this irreplaceable relic of American organ culture will be scrapped. -Scot Huntington
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