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St. Charles Preparatory School
2/9 Kilgen		 Main Page  Pipe Photos
Page 1		 Pipe Photos
Page 2		 Console Other Photos Stop List

St. Charles Preparatory School
Columbus, OH
2/9 Kilgen
Opus 3721 - 1926

Photos of the Console

 Click on the photo to see a larger image
Console Along with the rest of the organ, the console was also rebuilt during the 2001 renovation of the instrument. From my vague knowledge of the old console, just about everything was replaced (stop tabs, manuals, toe studs, etc.), but I could be wrong. It all looks very new, however the console itself is definitely the original one.
memory and builder's plate On the far left is the builder's plate and a dial for memory level. This allows the organist to store different sets of preset registrations on each memory level. Likely this was added as a part of the console's renovation.
name plate Here's a close up view of the builder's plate which has certainly seen better days. The Kilgen Organ Company was one of the more popular builders in their time, building both church  (classical) organs and theater organs. The company first started building organs in 1851 and went out of business in 1960. Few Kilgen organs exist today in central Ohio.
Pedal stop tabs
 This organ uses a slightly different type of stop tab, one more commonly seen only used for couplers. These tabs are "rocker" type tabs, and by pressing on the bottom half of the tab it will rock the tab forward. Seen here are the stops for the Pedal Division. The four tabs to the right are couplers which couple divisions of the organ together.
stop tabs The center set of tabs is for the Swell Division of the organ. Even though there are nine stop tabs for pipes, only six ranks of pipes are actually used. The two Flute ranks "borrow" pipes from the Gedeckt rank when selected.
Stop tabs The tabs on the right side are for the Great Division. Again a lot of borrowing going on with this set. There are six tabs for pipes but only three ranks represented. The 4' Octave and 2' Super Octave ranks borrow from the 8' Diapason rank, and the two Harmonic Flute stops are part of the same rank of pipes.
lights On the far right side are lights for wind (blower on), crescendo, and sforzando. For this organ, if the crescendo pedal is depressed at all the green light comes on. The brightness of the light is not proportional to how much the pedal is depressed. Many organs have a series of lights to show how far the crescendo pedal has been depressed.

Toe studs pedals toe studs
Above is a somewhat panoramic view of the toe studs and expression pedals of the console. This is a fairly simple organ and does not have a great number of presets for toe studs or couplers. The middle photo is probably the key to figuring out the original home of this organ. The photo shows pedals for Great, Swell, and Crescendo. Since today all of the pipes are in one chamber it makes no sense to have separate expression pedals for Great and Swell. While at the console, I noted that pressing the Great pedal did nothing, while pressing the Swell moved the shutters in front of the pipe chamber.

 The only logical explanation for the Great pedal is that the organ's pipes were in two separate chambers, both under expression. The Holy Angels Chapel (aka "Upper Chapel") had two pipe chambers, one on either side in the rear of the chapel. Though the date of the organ doesn't line up 100% with the date of the building, it's close enough to reasonably conclude that the Upper Chapel was the original home of this organ. It is unknown if Kilgen assisted in moving the organ to its current home in 1937.



St. Charles Preparatory School
2/9 Kilgen		 Main Page  Pipe Photos
Page 1		 Pipe Photos
Page 2		 Console Other Photos Stop List
List of Pipe Organ Profiles Pipe Organ Profiles Home N8RRB Home E-mail the Webmaster