Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2021-01-27 - This organ is known only from the Hook & Hastings second-hand list. Nothing is known of its original maker or provenance, or what became of it, or when. The Hook list gives the "date moved" as 1885, assigns second-hand organ no. 131, and a size of 2 manuals and 22 registers. The vertical jambs by themselves, suggest an organ built before 1860, or from a conservative builder from the mid-1860s such as Garret House (who favored the "sad" mouth line of the center flat and which is atypical for Hook). The case could be a typical stock case for the Hooks in the 1870-1880s period, but the crosses suggest a case treatment more commonly found in catholic churches. The size of the Swell box behind the facade pipes indicates a short-compass division, at least 20 knobs can be counted in the fuzzy photo, and a modesty curtain can be seen at the right rear for hiding the bellows pumper. The earliest date assigned to a number on the list is 1863 for organ no. 7, the organs get sparse after 1900, and the last entry is No. 333 in 1919. Alumni Hall, originally built in 1851 as Chapel Hall for the Alfred Academy (Seventh-Day Baptist seminary school) later was renamed Alumni Hall when the school expanded after the Civil War as Alfred University, a 4-year liberal arts college. Students during the 19th-century were required to attend daily chapel services here. However, the building's use evolved during the 20th century and the second-floor room became a multi-purpose space first as a gymnasium and lecture hall, then later with fixed seating installed on the ground floor and three-sided gallery as a lecture hall and performance space, and finally in the 1960s and 1970s as the town's movie theater. The chapel space seen in the photograph may have been on the first floor, a space also used for lectures and later secularized as a lecture hall and smaller classrooms and offices. It's not clear when the practice of chapel services ended. Nearly torn down in the 1980s, the building was saved by preservationists. Now the oldest campus building, it has been divided into office spaces and repainted in an historic color scheme. The organ is long gone, having disappeared without a trace or even remembered in the distant memory of the town's oldest citizens. -Scot Huntington
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