Historic pipe organ up for sale

CEDAR RAPIDS - The large Verney organ with pipes that climb 26 feet, once an instrument saved by a Cedar Rapids congregation, is again for sale and may find its way back to its original hometown.

Members of Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids saved the organ from being discarded in 1993. Now in need of the space and no longer wanting to pay continuous repair fees, the congregation is ready to pass it on.

 “The money we spent to buy it was nothing compared to what we were starting to pour into it,” said Rachel Mills, one of the Christ Episcopal congregation members involved in the original purchase decision.

Several musicians in northern Iowa have started discussions about returning the organ to Mason City, where it was built by the Verney Organ Co. in 1904.

 “I think it would give us something to be extremely proud of [Note] as a guilt [/NOTE] to have it come back to Mason City,” said Cyndy Johnson, dean of the American Guild of Organists, North Iowa Chapter. “It is historically significant.”

When members of Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids first saw the Verney organ in Parkersburg in 1992 they saw it as something they needed to restore.

“It was so beautiful and it was so sad that it was going to be discarded,” Mills said [Note] , one of the congregation members who made the trip to see the 1904 organ [/NOTE] . “The people in Parkersburg had a very large, Romanesque church, brick, from around the 1900s and they were ready to move on to a modern church.”

Before making the trip, Mills contacted the Organ Historical Society to learn more about the instrument. She learned that it was built by the Verney Organ Co. in Mason City and that the organ builder did not create many instruments. The organ in Parkersburg was quite likely one of the last pieces of his work still in use, she said.

 “We got all excited about that, the organ is listed on the Organ Historical Society's list,” Mills said.

The Cedar Rapids congregation paid $25,000 to purchase the organ and Mills said it cost about that much to bring it to Cedar Rapids and get it installed.

 “When we got it to Cedar Rapids we put it in our church and it just fit like a glove,” she said. “It was really miraculous. We lived with it all those years rather joyously.”

Before it got to Cedar Rapids, however, the organ was kept in a building with no consistent heat source and had started to dry out. The congregation at Christ Episcopal paid to have it reconditioned, but in the last three years it's been drying out more, Mills said.

 “It started requiring some more attention and that attention was very expensive,” she said. “It became too much for our vestry.”

There's no price on the organ, but Mills said the congregation is hoping someone who knows its worth will step forward.

 “We're hoping for someone who has a love for a tracker organ and an organ that was meant for a 19th century church setting,” she said. “That's really where it belongs, in the hands of someone who loves it.”