Opus 10. Holy Cross Church (R.C.)

Click for Stop List, and Recorded Examples

This is a photo of Sister Barbara Ann Long, organist and music director, Holy Cross church, and Liturgist for the Diocese of Monterrey, at the organ in November, 2000. Sister Barbara almost single-handedly raised the money to obtain a pipe organ for the church.  At the time we were rebuilding the Felgemaker organ (obtained through The Organ Clearing House)  the church was undergoing a complete restoration.

This is John Brzovic, master furniture maker, whom I hired to make the additions and modifications to the organ case.  You can clearly see what is original and which parts were newly made.

In this view you can see the upper part of the new left side of the case in the works.  Sister Barbara had an assortment of old facade pipes which we placed in the side openings as shown.  Although most of the organ is located in the tower recess portion of the gallery, we brought the Great division into the main part of the gallery by the addition of these case sides.  The door into the interior of the organ and access to the tower and attic is situated in the lower portion of this case side.

Here is a Polaroid shot of the Felgemaker as it looked in Columbus, Ohio just before Alan Laufman, Amory Atkin and I dismantled it and brought it to Santa Cruz.  In its original home I believe this organ must have sat in a chamber framed by an arch.  The sides in this location  were just crude white panels and the odd, toothy look of the facade pipes suggests some form of wall opening close to the pipes.  The center "tooth" would have interfered with the view of the rose window at Holy Cross, so I created the new facade design by rearranging the upper case parts and adding new elements. From a design point of view the result is not one of my better efforts, but it works well enough in the context of its surroundings.

Notice in the new incarnation I made use of the odd, triangular facade pipe toeboard by moving it up to become a top.  On the underside I added subtle curving wedges on both sides to lessen the severity of the line of pipe tops in the center flat.  The Greek temple look of the center section is admittedly odd with the neo-gothic points over the outer flats, but I think the very nice negative space created by the case top and the great arch above it saves the design to some degree.  I kept the gabled piece because it was part of the original organ and, as mentioned above, because it allowed the rose window to remain visible from downstairs.

This photograph, taken from a point near the organ case, shows the splendid interior of this 1889 church.  The elaborately illuminated walls and ceiling were painstakingly retouched during the restoration in the early 1980's.  The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 heavily damaged the building, which had to be closed for several years.  Happily the organ was not damaged and the building was completely repaired.