Wurlitzer

Wurlitzer is the common name for band organs or orchestrions, vintage band organs and jukeboxes produced by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company.

Band organ models once produced by Wurlitzer include #103 (Flying Horses Carousel, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, USA), #104, #146A, #146B, #153 (Antique Carousel, Canobie Lake Park, Salem, New Hampshire, USA), #157 (King Arthur's Carrousel, Disneyland Park, Anaheim, California, USA), and #165 (Glen Echo Park Dentzel Carousel, Glen Echo, Maryland, USA). Some orchestrions made by the company can be found at Clark's Trading Post, Lincoln, New Hampshire, USA. The company was acquired by the Baldwin Company.

Eventually, Wurlitzer evolved to the point where it produced only organs and jukeboxes. It no longer produces either. Wurlitzer's abandoned factory, in the same complex as that of the Eugene DeKleist company (another maker of band organs and orchestrions, acquired by Wurlitzer), is in North Tonawanda, New York, USA.

Perhaps the most famous instruments Wurlitzer built were its pipe organs (from 1914 until around 1940), which were installed in theaters, homes, churches, and other public places. "The Mighty Wurlitzer" theatre organ was designed, originally by Robert Hope-Jones, as a "one man orchestra" to accompany silent movies. In all, Wurlitzer built over 2,200 pipe organs, the largest being the one at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The Music Hall instrument is actually a concert instrument, capable of playing classical as well as non-classical literature. It was the only Wurlitzer installation still in use that has dual identical, but independent consoles. Other large Wurlitzer organs still in their original locations include the Fox Theaters in Saint Louis, Missouri and Detroit, Michigan and Shea's Theater in Buffalo, New York.

In the 1950's, the American Association of Theater Organ Enthusiats (AATOE) was formed to save and preserve theater organs that still remained. (There were other builders as well, including W.W. Kimball Company, M.P. Moller, Inc., Robert Morton Organ Company, George Kilgen and Sons, Marr and Colton Organ Company, the Bartola Musical Instrument Company (Barton Theater Organs), and the Wicks Organ Company.) The AATOE is now know as the American Theater Organ Society. [1]