A Chicago-made organ in an English country church (Hammond: home, to buy)

[BereniceUK]

The organ was made by Story & Clark of Chicago but how on earth did it end up in St Andrew's Church in Wroxeter in the county of Shropshire? Was Story & Clark a big company and did they export organs?

I took the photos last Saturday.

[emathias]

Story & Clark pianos have been around since the mid-19th century in one form or another although I guess the company was only founded in about 1888 (there seem to be some dispute about exact dates). They are primarily a piano maker, probably most famous for their player pianos. Organs by them were primarily created in the 1880s and 1890s, with a few earlier. This site has a photo of one supposedly from 1874 that looks remarkably like yours.

A descendant company, QRS, claims to be the only maker of player piano scrolls still around.

Chicago in the 1870s through, say, the 1940s had a lot in common with modern-day China as far as the role each played in manufacturing for the respective eras. Turn-of-century Chicago made just about anything for just about everyone, and while the international export market wasn't quite as big then as it is now, you find all sorts of things around the U.S. made in Chicago during that era. It doesn't surprise me at all that something from that era overseas would be from Chicago, too, especially something that would probably have been fairly expensive in Europe at the time to make the cost of importing it worth it due to cost of manufacturing savings. That period was the period of Chicago's explosive growth from small lumber town to the fifth largest (in 1900) city in the world and the center of mass manufacturing and transportation. At the time it was often billed as the fastest growing city in the history of the world, and while I don't know if that was exactly true it couldn't have been far off the mark.

[chirack]

The company name still exsists somewhat but here is a link you might like:
The Antique Piano Shop | Story & Clark

[radiojunkie2006]

It's really not surprising that the organ would end up in the UK. Chicago was the first home to a lot of world renowned musical instrument manufacturers including but not limited to, Hammond Organ Company, Ludwig Drum Company, Slingerland Drum Company, Lyon & Healy Harps and Pianos just to name a few.

My family purchased a Hammond B3 in 1963 from the Lyon & Healy store in downtown Chicago. I still own it and it still plays; anyone want to buy it?