BRATTLEBORO — A new addition from a century past, will join the Brattleboro scene on June 29, when the Estey Organ Museum, in the Engine House Gallery in the Estey Organ Company Factory complex at 108 Birge St., will open its doors after several years of planning.
The museum will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. that day, and a tour of the Estey Organ Company Factory Buildings will be offered at 2 p.m.
“We plan to create a world-class interactive music museum devoted to all things Estey,” writes museum organizers on their Web site, esteyorganmuseum.org.
The museum will celebrate the heritage of the Estey Organ Company, which created reed, pipe, and electronic organs for churches and private homes from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s.
The Engine House, the first of the museum's planned exhibit spaces, will introduce visitors to museum planning, the history of the Estey Organ Company, the types of organs produced, and tools and catalogs. An Estey employee, Harald Bode, a pioneer of electronic musical instrument design, will also be featured.
One of the reasons for the museum's inception “is to capture Estey's unique time in history, from the point of view of Estey's owners, workers, customers, and neighbors,” the site says.
The Estey Organ Museum will include permanent exhibits of a variety of Estey organs, Victorian parlors, and exhibits that allow visitors to try out Estey organs; the museum will offer a number of organ restoration classes.
“The museum we envision will allow visitors to explore and learn about music, social history, craft industries, and much more,” the group's organizers write.
The Estey Organ Museum organization has purchased the Engine House and, as money is raised for the project, the group is planning to restore other portions of the Estey factory for the museum's full range of exhibits.