ca. 1900 - Chamber and facade featured in Cole catalog (Photograph from an archival source: Cole Church Organ Co. catalog ca. 1900, submitted by Scot Huntington/Scot Huntington)
Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2021-04-07 - This organ is known specifically through a photo in the Cole Church Organ Co. catalog, and also on a James Cole opus list published by him at an unknown later date. This list contains almost 100 organs, and obviously includes instruments built during his association with Cole & Woodberry (1893-1899). None of the various published lists for the Woodberry clan contain a reference for Geneva, although it's inclusion in a catalog published the first year Cole started his own business in 1900 would suggest it was built prior to that date, and therefore would be a Cole & Woodberry instrument. A subsequent database entry for this instrument found by David Lennington cites the Geneva Daily Times, September 27, 1926 article announcing the electrication of the church's two-manual mechanical-action organ by Arthur Kohl of Rochester. However, this church is also listed in a New York state master organ list for a 3-manual Wicks Op. 1150, 1933. I have seen other Cole & Woodberry organs of this period built in chancel chambers for Episcopal churches, where the English-style keydesk (i.e. with vertical angled stop jambs) is recessed into a niche under the organ, in some cases with the Great chest and case cantilevered out over the organist into the chancel. I can't imagine a worse place to hear the organ. While the keydesk is in the shadows in the accompanying photo, its niched is clearly visible under the case, behind the stalls and some tracery. The Woodberry organs of this era, influenced both by James Cole and their mutual brief association with Carlton Michell, are surprisingly bold and clean sounding, with bright diapasons, rather keen orchestral strings, and English-style reeds, at a time when the majority of American builders had fallen under the Roosevelt spell and moved toward a "cigars and brandy" tonal style. The Cole & Woodberry quality was extremely high. -Scot Huntington
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