Ernest M. Skinner Company
Opus 145, 1907

From the NYC AGO NYC Organ Project: In 1907, Ernest M. Skinner Company of Boston installed a four-manual-and-pedal organ in Tompkins Avenue Church. Skinner retained the existing case and 28 ranks from the previous Midmer organ, and also installed an early example of his Orchestral Oboe stop. The organ was played from a four-manual drawknob console. The organ was dedicated on March 2, 1908 by Clarence Eddy, who was then the organist and choirmaster of the church. Marcel Dupré presented his last American concert of 1937 on this organ, performing Bach's Fantasy and Fugue in G minor; the Allegro from Handel's Organ Concerto No. 10; Mozart's Fantasy in F minor; Sowerby's "Comes Autumn Time," and works of Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn, Reger, Russell, Schubert and Dupré.

n 1942, Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church merged with and moved to the Flatbush Congregational Church, located at 19th Street and Dorchester, forming the Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church. The membership of the merged churches was 4,100, making it the largest Congregational Church in the United States at the time. The Tompkins Avenue building was then acquired by the First A.M.E. Zion Church. As of 2006, the organ was extant but unplayable.

Updated through online information from Connor Annable.

Identified through information adapted from E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List, by Sand Lawn and Allen Kinzey (Organ Historical Society, 1997), and included here through the kind permission of Sand Lawn: Replaced a Reuben Midmer & Son; dedicated March 2, 1908 by Clarence Eddy; retained existing case and twenty-eight ranks; extant.