Pipe Organ Database

From the Database Builders Listing Editor, Stephen Hall. Updated Jan 1, 2016. -

A. & J. Pipe & Reed Organ Service was a partnership of Archie Marchi and Joseph Corkedale in Newburgh, New York; according to Fox,¹ they were active 1979-1995, although a news article in the local paper indicates they were active from 1968.² Perhaps they did the work informally at first, and opened their shop in 1979. The shop apparently closed about the time Corkedale died in November of 2000.³

Archie Marchi first became interested in the work [pipe and reed organ repair and restoration] in 1968. Local organist Joseph Corkedale had loaned him a small reed organ. When the instrument developed a problem, Marchi took it apart and repaired it. The incident launched Marchi into study on organ building. The two men started their service work together shortly thereafter. They set up shop on Johnston Street in Newburgh, moved to Poughkeepsie briefly in the mid 1980s when the original shop was vandalized, and returned to Newburgh in 1985 to set up a new shop on Carter Street in the former Reale Glass Co. building.⁵

The firm repaired the Hall & Labagh organ built in 1856 for St. George's Episcopal Church in Newburgh. In 1886 the organ had been acquired by the Masons for their lodge in Newburgh. The organ moved again in 1915 when the Masons donated it to the Associated Reform Church which had been located at Grand and First Street in Newburgh. Marchi and Corkedale purchased the instrument in 1980 when the church closed, it had been sitting silent in the gallery since the church had installed a Hinners organ in 1922. Joseph Corkedale gave a final concert on it at the church before they moved it to their shop. The only change the pair made to the instrument was to move the pump handle from the rear to the side. The facade pipes were half-round wooden dummy pipes, the manuals were 56 note with a 17 note pedalboard. The instrument was intended to be placed eventually in the New York State Museum in Albany. The firm also worked on a 1894 Felgemaker organ for Pine Bush United Methodist Church adding an 'electronic' pedal division to the tracker organ.⁶

Electronic pedal division here may mean a pipe division controlled by electrical key action rather than a division of electronically generated tones. –Ed.

Sources:

1. David H. Fox, "A. & J. Pipe & Reed Organ Service" in A Guide to North American Organbuilders, (Organ Historical Society, 1991), p51.
2. Ruth Valenti, "Organ Repairing Team Returns" Evening News, Middletown, New York, Aug 6, 1985, (on-line edition), accessed Jan. 1 2016.
3. "Joseph Corkedale" Obituary in Times Herald-Record, Middleton New York, November 3, 2005 (on-line edition), accessed Jan. 1 2016.
4. "Archangelo "Archie� Marchi" Obituary. Times Herald-Record, Middletown, New York (on-line edition), posted Dec. 5, 2011, accessed Jan. 1, 2016.
5. Valenti, Organ Repair Team Returns.
6. Valenti, ibid.

Note from the OHS PC Database, derived from A Guide to North American Organbuilders, rev. ed., by David H. Fox (Richmond, Va.: Organ Historical Society, 1997). Edited for the revised OHS Online Database website, 2017. -

Partnership of Archie Marchi and Joseph Corkedale, Newburgh, New York; 1979-1995.

Sources:

• Organ Handbook: (Organ Historical Society, 1979) 26.
• Elizabeth Towne Schmitt.
•