W.K. Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek has a secret. It’s hidden beneath the floor boards of the stage. It’s in the ceiling and in the walls. It’s everywhere, but you’ve likely never seen it. It’s one of the last unaltered pipe organs built by Ernest M. Skinner - considered to be one of the greatest organ makers in American history.
“And it’s a little like having the last unaltered Stradivarius sitting in your town and not knowing that it’s there," says Brooks Grantier - a fellow of the American Guild of Organists.
“He represents that sort of pinnacle of musical achievement that hardly been equaled since.”
W.K. Kellogg himself commissioned the organ for the auditorium. He and his wife, organist Dr. Carrie Staines, had two much smaller Skinner organs - one for their home in California and another for their house on Gull Lake.
For the large organ in the auditorium, Kellogg shelled out a whopping $30,000. According to Western Michigan University Economics Depart Chair Donald Meyer, that would be about $1.5 million today.
“It was now the depression and the easy money of the 20s was over. And pipe organs not being the necessity that they were but now becoming something of luxury - the residents market had completely dried up. And even the church and concert hall market was pretty thin in the early 30s. So here came the prospect of a large instrument to Aeolian-Skinner and they weren’t going to let it go by. They told Skinner to knock himself out,” says Grantier.
As a result, Grantier says the pipe organ in Kellogg auditorium is a Cadillac of its kind in a lot of ways. It has more than 4,600 pipes - the tallest of which is about 32 feet high. It also has 56 stops. Just to compare - St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek has a Skinner organ. It has a little over 1,000 pipes and just 14 stops.
“The knobs or controls on a console are there to allow you to bring on or take off ranks of pipes at will - otherwise you’re playing them all all the time. So you can ‘pull out all the stops’ as the phrase goes and make it all pretty loud or you can reduce it down to an almost inaudible whisper,” says Grantier
The stops also act like pre-sets to make the organ sound a certain way. There are stops like “French Horn,” “Tremolo,” and “Ophicleide" - a brass instrument similar to a tuba.
Grantier says it’s an orchestral organ. When you hear it, it is hard to believe all that sound is coming from just one instrument.
W.K. Kellogg also bought organs for St. Thomas Episcopal Church and St. Philip Catholic Church in Battle Creek - though they’re not nearly as grand as the one in Kellogg auditorium. For all its charms, Grantier says many people in West Michigan don’t know that organ is there.
“Many people have absolutely no idea what’s behind those grills. They think they’re purely decorative or that there’s loud speakers or something behind them. The organ console itself is covered most of the time by these stage pit extension and has to be laboriously uncovered to make it available,” he says.
Even Andrew Banning - an employee with Battle Creek Public Schools - was surprised to see the massive pipes tucked away in various rooms around the auditorium. He says he's worked for Battle Creek Schools for ten years.
All of the rooms that hold the organ are under lock and key. One of them can only be reached by making a vertical climb up a tall metal ladder. Grantier says overall the organ is in good shape, but it still needs some work.
“It does need further restoration for sure. Some of the leather parts in it are still original in 1933 - which is a testament to the kind of materials Skinner used,” he says.
Grantier says the organ is only dusted off about six times a year, but it longs to be played.
