Casavant Organ 
The 4 manual, 108 rank Casavant organ, Op 1177 (1927) from the Phillips Academy in Andover, MA plays again in its new home after nearly two decades of silence. The organ has been reconstructed by the Schantz Organ Company of Orville, Ohio and installed in the summer of 2001 in the new 1800 seat sanctuary of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, MN. Originally installed in George Washington Hall at the academy, the organ was relocated to a new chapel on the campus in 1932 when the burden of the Great Depression prohibited the purchase of a planned new instrument. In this second installation, most of the organ suffered from extremely poor tonal egress with pipes trapped behind walls and facade woodwork. Nearly doomed to become another casualty of the then fashionable "neo-" trends in American organ building, the closeted Casavant survived for almost a half century before the school decided to replace it with a smaller, well-placed instrument. The organ was sold and moved to a barn in Traverse City, MI where it was to stay temporarily before being reinstalled in a nearby performing arts building. Those plans never materialized, and the organ changed owners several times but remained in the barn and endured over 15 years of grim storage conditions. In 1995 the organ was purchased by a St. Andrew's family and finally moved to safe storage in November of 1996. Due to the unfortunate damage from years of neglect and the care-less loss of critical components, plans for a full restoration of all the chests, console and mechanisms were abandoned. Instead, all new electro-pneumatic chests replace the original ventil chests, and the reconfigured organ includes a new console (with original ivory keys from another 1920's Casavant) and a new facade which was installed by Schantz in the fall of 1999. Of the 7,310 pipes of the organ, almost all are restored original pipes and faithful replicas replace pipes deemed beyond repair. Notable yet somewhat typical attributes of this 1920's Casavant include: 3-32' pedal stops; 73-note manual chests for most stops, including mixtures and Cornets; Diapason choruses in all divisions; 16'-8'-4' chorus reeds in each manual division; 3 amply scaled Cornets; and 9-16' manual stops with only 1 originally borrowed to the pedal, which itself has 14 independent registers. The design architect for the new sanctuary is the Danish firm Friis & Moltke A/S; the acoustical consultant is Kirkegaard & Associates.
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