Odenbrett & Abler
1880

Database Manager on April 14th, 2013:
Updated through online information from Rodney J. Weed. -- Odenbrett and Abler was one of several German Organ builders located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the late 1800s. The Cathedral has in its records the contract wih Odenbrett and Abler signed November 1879. Some of the original pipes of this Odenbrett and Abler organ remain in use in the Current Wicks organ built in 1986. I do not know first hand which ranks these would be in the current organ.

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Database Manager on April 12th, 2013:
This entry describes an original installation of a new pipe organ. Identified by Rodney J. Weed, using information found in David Bohn, Die Winerfloete Volume XXII, no. 2 March, 2013 page 5. -- "Excerpts from the contract: The contract was made on the twenty-fifth of November 1879 to be ready for the twenty-fifth of March 1880, and the organ was to cost $2,500.00. The Metal pipes were to be of spotted metal and the show pipes"will be made of English tin and highly polished." The wind pressure was to be three inches. The case was to be "made of white ash trimmed with walnut in harmony with the cathedral, plain but good." The contract also mentions paying $9.50 in freight from Boston in addition to freight from Milwaukee. The organ was rebuilt by Schaefer Organ Co. of Slinger, WI in the early 1920's, and again in 1953, and was replaced with a Wicks in 1986 that reuses a handful of the Odenbrett pipes.