Robert L. Sipe, 83, died May 24 in Dallas, Texas, after a long illness. He was a veteran Dallas organbuilder who over 60 years produced new and rebuilt instruments across the United States. Following pioneering 1950s United States installations by Beckerath and Flentrop, Sipe was the first Texas builder after Otto Hofmann to wholeheartedly embrace neo-Baroque principles of mechanical action, slider windchests, low wind pressures, freestanding encasement, and lean and brilliant sonorities.
Excerpts and summaries of news stories from the former Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and Sunday News that focus on the events in the county’s past that are noteworthy, newsworthy
Editor's note: Click on the link above to view the front cover of the April 1951 issue of The Diapason and announcement of Opus 1132 for the Church of the Redeemer, New Haven, Connecticut.
The organ’s first career
In 1951 New Haven’s Church of the Redeemer, founded in 1838, moved into a neo-colonial structure designed by prominent local architect Douglas Orr. The new church was located in the city’s East Rock neighborhood and quickly took its place among Orr’s other distinguished buildings that remain popular to the present day.
Pipe Organs of La Grange, Illinois, Part 8: Grace Lutheran Church June 27, 2021
Stephen Schnurr
Stephen Schnurr is editorial director and publisher of The Diapason
, director of music for Saint Paul Catholic Church, Valparaiso, Indiana, and adjunct instructor in organ for Valparaiso University.
. The information was delivered as a lecture for the Midwinter Pipe Organ Conclave on January 19, 2015, in La Grange, Illinois. The research for this project provides a history of a number of pipe organs in the village, but not all. For instance, organs in residences and theaters are not surveyed.
Grace Lutheran Church of La Grange was organized on April 14, 1887, as the Swedish Lutheran Church, the sixth congregation founded in the village. The lot at the southeast corner of Ogden and South Kensington Avenues was purchased the next month for $600. In June, an architect’s plan for a church measuring twenty feet by fifty feet was accepted, and ground was broken.