History
The Clark Street entrance to the Chicago Temple, circa 1924.
In The Beginning
From its earliest days, the First United Methodist Church of Chicago has often found itself at the threshold of momentous decisions:
Launching the congregation in 1831 (prior to the incorporation of the city of Chicago)
Choosing to purchase land in a prominent location in what would become known as The Loop, erecting the several buildings that housed the congregation in the nineteenth century,
Remaining at the corner of Clark and Washington Streets after the fire of 1871
And perhaps the most momentous decision of its first century — the construction of a 23-story, multiuse building.
In David Foster’s excellent history of the building, Sermon in Stone, we read that the original contract price for the building was about $3 million, and the congregation financed 75 percent of that total to complete construction. Ironically, the amount in the early 1920’s is about equal to the cost of our current organ restoration project.
Ernest Martin Skinner was the most sought-after organ builder of the early 20th century.
Opus 414 & 20th Century Pipe Organs
In May of 1924, four months before the dedication and official opening of the sanctuary in the new high-rise (the tallest building in the City until 1930), the church installed a large 4-manual pipe organ with 4,316 pipes built by the most sought-after organ builder of the early 20th century, Ernest Martin Skinner.
In the year of manufacturing Opus 414, the Skinner company built a staggering 52 organs of various sizes around the country.
| Notable E.M. Skinner Organs, Chicago | ||
|---|---|---|
| Organ | Location | Year |
| Opus 211 | Hyde Park Baptist Church | 1912 |
| Opus 71 | Fourth Presbyterian | 1913 |
| Opus 207 | Kenwood United Church of Christ | 1913 |
| Opus 208 | First Church of Christ, Scientist (Evanston) | 1913 |
| Opus 274 | First Congregational Church (Oak Park) | 1917 |
| Opus 281 | Tenth Church of Christ, Scientist | 1917 |
| Opus 327 | St. Luke's Episcopal (Evanston) | 1922 |
| Opus 348 | First Presbyterian Church, Chicago | 1921 |
| Opus 358 | First Baptist (Oak Park) | 1922 |
| Opus 405 | Cossitt Avenue School (La Grange) | 1923 |
| Opus 414 | First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple | 1924 |
Not all of these instruments had as many pipes as Opus 414, but our minds pause at the sheer volume of projects being managed by the company at that time. Remarkably, given this volume, the quality of the sound and workmanship was high.
Opus 414’s lead-tin pipes with their classic “spotted metal” appearance.
Opus 414 Design
Opus 414 was built in E. M. Skinner’s grand symphonic style of organ building in which lush-sounding pipes reproduced as much as possible the effects of numerous solo instruments.
Organs at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries were conceived of as complete orchestras and were not designed to play the contrapuntal music that had come before. Transcriptions of orchestral scores and music composed in that style were the repertoire of the day, and Opus 414 fit it like a glove.
The console of Opus 414 (the third in its history) will be replaced along with a complete restoration of the entire instrument in the n Fall of 2026.
Decades of Service
Thanks to extensive research by Director of Music Erik Nussbaum and choir member Kelly Krob, we know that after the inauguration of Opus 414 in 1924, midday organ recitals were given every Tuesday and Friday for several years. As the decades proceeded, differing levels of activities involving the organ are documented in church archives.
After about fifty years of service, records begin to mention the organ’s deterioration, acknowledging that half a century of constant use and the challenging atmospheric conditions in the sanctuary took its toll on the instrument.
Even the best building materials available in the first decades of the twentieth century were not immune to the progression of time and environment.
By the late 1970’s, two impulses were gaining momentum within the church.
The first was a desire to update the tonal character of the organ from a purely orchestral instrument to one that could play the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Bach, more effectively and convincingly.
The second was a need to address the ongoing mechanical failures of the instrument.
New, experimental materials and technical innovations were not as successful as anticipated.
Repairs & Expansion
Both intentions were realized in 1982 when the Wicks Organ Company of Highland, Illinois, completed several tonal updates, addressed the mechanical problems, and electrified much of the winding mechanism of the instrument, eliminating the pneumatic mechanism with which it had been equipped initially.
The space in the organ chamber that had been taken up by the pneumatic stop action was filled at this time with the entirely new Positif division, a set of approximately 1,200 pipes for use in playing more historic, contrapuntal music.
Newer, experimental materials and technical innovations were used throughout the updated organ — they were expected to last longer and produce better musical results.
The past forty years have revealed that these experimental materials were not successful in the ways anticipated. Some of the newer parts of the organ were failing faster than the parts from 1924.
A century of constant use and slowly deteriorating components made the organ seriously unreliable.
A Pipe Organ in Peril
A series of catastrophic water leaks onto the organ from the floors in the building above the organ chamber occurred in the decades that followed. Repairs after those water events were limited and piecemeal.
The Echo division, located in the slanted ceiling of the west balcony, stopped operating due to a variety of deteriorations.
The 1982 console began to have electrical problems that veered toward the dangerous. As a remedy, the third console was supplied in 2005.
Despite the relatively new console and numerous patches and fixes over 35 years, the circuit boards in the organ chamber from 1982 never “spoke” flawlessly with the 21st-century digital components in the 2005 console. A century of constant use and slowly deteriorating components throughout the instrument made the organ seriously unreliable and increasingly costly to repair.
Large portions of the organ have not played for several years. On the day before Thanksgiving in 2023, the windchests for the entire Solo division began to leak and have been shut down since then.
A stack of Opus 414’s wooden pipes, chosen for their dark, soft sound, are readied for shipping to Schantz Organ Company for repair.
The Restoration of Opus 414
In July, 2017, the Committee for the Restoration of Opus 414 convened for the first time.
The Committee subsequently determined that replacing the organ with a new instrument of similar size would cost several million dollars more than restoring what remained of the original instrument.
During the first six months of 2018, the Committee invited three organ builders skilled in the restoration of large symphonic organs to submit bids for a comprehensive restoration project. After detailed interviews with representatives from all three companies, the Committee chose the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio, to carry out the restoration project.
A contract was signed with Schantz on May 24, 2024, and the organ was removed from its chamber in the sanctuary in November of 2025
The Future of Opus 414
Opus 414 will return, fully restored, to the Chicago Temple in the late fall of 2026. Celebrations, including solo and collaborative performances, will publicized on this site and to newsletter subscribers.