Date unknown - House exterior (Vintage postcard/Jim Stettner)
Note: Not playable. (in this location)
2025-04-21 - This entry represents the installation of a new organ. Identified through online information from Scot L. Huntington (April 21, 2025): Morton Freeman Plant (1851-1918) was the scion of a family involved in southern railroads. Morton Plant built a massive estate, Branford, on the southern tip of Groton--Avery Point at the mouth of the Thames River, which at one time included a model farm, golf course, ornamental gardens, and game preserve and was originally over 1,000 acres. The mansion was built in 1903 at a cost of $3 million dollars. The contract for the organ was signed in June 1915 for delivery in September, at a cost of $27,500. Plant died in 1918, a victim of the Swine Flu epidemic. His son Henry Bradford (1885-1938) inherited the property and family enterprises. Henry lived primarily on his yacht in Florida while his wife and and two daughters lived at their New York townhouse. He died of sleeping sickness in 1938. The Groton estate house was their summer residence. In April 1929, Henry's wife Amy (nee Warren, 1895-1981) signed the contract for $8,290 to have the organ shipped back to Garfield to be fitted with new windchests, (using Aeolian's pitman chests). The original Aeolian ventil chests were difficult to service and were notorious for being troublesome and cipher prone. The Plant family was well known for their generous philanthropy in and around Groton and New London, Connecticut. In the late 1930s, the family turned the estate over to the State of Connecticut, likely after Henry's untimely death in 1938. In 1942 the state leased the property to the Coast Guard, which built barracks and a lighthouse on the property for officer training and later for dynamite training on nearby Pine Island. In 1967 the Coast Guard turned the land back to the state which in turn gave it to the University of Connecticut which developed its Avery Point campus there, primarily for its Maritime curriculum. It would have been while the property was used by the Coast Guard that the Aeolian was removed for installation in the new Coast Guard Academy Chapel across the river in New London. The Chapel construction was begun in the late 1930s on a Congressional-appropriated shoestring budget, paused during the War, and finally completed in 1948. It is likely the organ was installed in the Chapel by this time, and was rebuilt in the American Classic style by Chester Raymond in 1952, without any manual duplexing. It was replaced with an imitation in 2000 (now failing in 2025) and the pipe organ was unceremoniously junked, one of two chancel chambers being converted into an elevator shaft. At Branford, the main organ and Echo were installed in the basement , "separated by a partition" with tone grates in the floor which were provided by Aeolian. The main organ was a Great and Swell, with a Choir manual duplexed from the Great. The Echo was a single division, duplexed to play as its own two-manual instrument on Great, Swell and Pedal. The Main and Echo organs each had their own set of Chimes, plus a Harp in the main organ. The organ had a 3 h.p. Spencer Orgo-blo. The console was finished in oak, stained to match the house woodwork. While not in the same league as the largest residential Aeolians, this was still a large organ by residence standards. -Scot Huntington
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