When the Ohio Theater opened Nov. 17, 1927, Mathew Mathews, of Buffalo, New York, was working the keys and pedals of the theater’s thousand-plus-pound organ.
A man who was there on opening night recalled the music rising “you didn’t know from where,” The Lima News wrote in September 1978. “Then this organ would rise out of the pit and a fellow playing it. They really knew how to start ‘em off in those days.”
The organ that started ‘em off – a Wurlitzer with nearly 1,000 pipes, eight foot pedals and 300 stops and keys ranging in size from pencil width to one more than 16-feet long and two feet wide – remained in the Ohio and in working condition until around 1969, when it was donated to a high school in Downers Grove, Illinois, near Chicago.
“Dismantling the organ turned into a long-distance project with the workers traveling 220 miles from Chicago to Lima each weekend,” The Lima News wrote in 1971. “Work crews of 20 men and women spent four consecutive weekends at the Lima theater.”
After removing “42 years of dirt and plaster dust” from the organ, replacing parts and generally rehabbing the Wurlitzer, the first notes in many years sounded from its console in April 1970, according to The Lima News.
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