Today I was listening to "All Things Considered" on the radio and heard about one of my personal landmarks: the old pipe organ at the former site of the Wanamakers department store in Philadelphia.
Whenever a person from Philly wanted to meet up with someone, that's where we told that person to go. The store was located in an old, 19th century building. I'm not exactly sure when it was built or what its original purpose was. But when I knew it, in the 50s and 60s mostly, it was a department store, the grand old kind, with magnificent holiday window displays full of animatronic figures of the old-fashioned, non-computerized kind, run by gears. There was a tiny ice-skating rink for toddlers on the 10th floor every Christmas, and concerts by the enormous pipe organ at noon every day.
The hall itself had a very high ceiling, but if an observer looked up and up, the organist was visible up there on the mezzanine, laboring away at the organ, which is the biggest instrument of its kind in the US and perhaps the world. It makes a grand rich sound and is very impressive to look at as well.
I was pleased to learn that although the store long ago went bust and the organ has had some hard times since then, the Macys that currently occupies the building has allowed a group of volunteers to recondition the organ and to continue working on it to keep it at its best.
If I ever go back to Philadelphia, I want to visit there again.
Here's a link to an article about the organ:
http://theatreorgans.com/pa/philly/WANN/
2 comments:
How civilized that was... Didn't shopping seem different back in those days? We didn't have so many clothes, and we had time to stop and listen to something that wasn't canned.
It was civilized! My mom used to make me dress up and wear little white gloves. It was a big hairy deal to go to town. Boy those days are gone for sure!
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