The facade pipes are installed and the fine-tuning begins.

After three weeks of installation work, the heavy lifting is nearly done. It has been nothing short of miraculous to see the evolution of St. Peter’s new pipe organ, Fisk Opus 136, be born before our eyes. From the unloading on March 21 to the facade pipes shown here, the organ assembly is about to move to a new stage: tuning and voicing. With the vast majority of pipes installed, the processing of making this beautiful instrument “speak” is about to begin.

One of the organbuilders on the installation team, Dana Sigall, gives vestry member John Hurst a tour of the inside of the organ--complete with a tutorial on the different kinds of pipes. Here, John is shown holding one made of wood.

Already hundreds of pictures have been taken showing the progress of the installation of St. Peter’s new pipe organ. As we get new photos, we’ll add them to a continuing slideshow. Click the menu above, “Installation Day-by-Day,” or follow this link.

A moving van full of organ parts arrived Sunday to be delivered to St. Peter’s. Immediately after the eleven o’clock service and a quick snack, the congregation made its way to the front lawn of the church to meet the van.

Andrew Gingery, project manager for Opus 136, gives the group their marching orders.

Andrew Gingery, project manager for C. B. Fisk’s Opus 136 got the group started with a few “fun facts” about the organ about to be unloaded: 2,577 pipes, 19,000 person hours of labor, 10 tons, 20 feet wide, 20 feet tall, 12 feet deep and built by 30 people in Gloucester, Mass. just for the people of St. Peter’s.

Weather threatened to turn ugly (and did), but the group had about two hours before the rain started pouring in fits and starts. The rain didn’t dampen the excitement, though, with the queue for unloading the van stretching from the edge of the St. Peter’s property on North Tryon around the corner to Seventh Street.

Boxes of parts, pieces of the case wrapped in moving blankets, and trays of pipes had to be moved from the van to the church. Some items were small enough for young and old alike to carry in; others required two, four, six, or eight people either to manage the weight or the size. There was plenty of work for everyone to do.

The tensest moment of the day involved getting four huge frames through the front door. Part barn raising, part fire brigade, getting the frames to fit through the door was an exercise in extreme engineering or good luck or faith. Once a frame got through the tower door, it had to be pivoted around (taking care not to damage the newly refurbished lantern hanging from the ceiling) and then through the aisle door. That aisle door just happens to have been widened nine inches during the renovation and every inch was needed!

Now the work of assembly begins. Artisans from the Fisk Company are now resident in Charlotte assembling our new organ.

The doors of the van open and the fun begins.

During the building of C. B. Fisk Opus 136, much of its construction has been documented in a professionally produced video program, the trailer for which is now on YouTube. While the video will cover the instrument destined for Harvard University’s chapel, much of the footage and sounds are from our very own Opus 136. Much of the filming took place during the Open House which St. Peter’s members attended back in November 2009.

The beautiful new oak floor is now stained and finished.

The new oak floor is installed, stained, and finished; the front door has been repaired; the sound system is being updated; the pavers for the the front walkway have been laid. During the coming week the final work getting ready for the city building inspection will be completed. The end of the building project is getting close.

Installing a floor is like assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle. Here the installer has rows of floorboards sized and ready to nail in.

Floor installation began Tuesday, February 23 and was substantially complete by the end of the day on Thursday. The floor material is rift sawn, white oak. Producing a highly regular, vertical grain pattern with no knots or blemishes, the rift cut is similar to quartersawn. (Quartersawn oak is also used in the organ case.)

The picture above shows the floor as it is being installed. The next tasks include staining the wood in a shade consistent with the pews, posts, and other wood elements in the nave. The floor should be completely finished by the end of the first week of March.

The new floor in the "parclose" chapel in the renovated south transept includes steps into the chancel.

The pendant lights are back in the nave, fully cleaned and refurbished.

The subfloor of the nave is now fully installed. The material used, over an inch thick, is installed on the diagonal and similar to what would have been used when the church was built. A layer of felt and the finished floor will go on top.

There’s light in the nave and lots of progress to see. The pendant lights, seen above, have been cleaned and are brighter in every way. Atop the pendants, “the hats” turned out to be red under 50 years of dirt. Inside the pendants, a new configuration of bulbs will shine light both up and down creating a much greater sense of light in the nave.

Down below, the subfloor has made all manner of other work feasible. With a stable surface, the moving scaffolding allows workers to finish plaster work, patching, and painting.

More pictures are after the break.

A beautiful new door is being readied for the new entrance.

An unused porch on the Discovery Place side of the church has been converted into an additional front entrance. Seen here is a new door being installed.

The former organ chamber has been repurposed as a parclose chapel, built in the same style as the side chapel on the opposite side. Archways have been created to match and balance the original archways. And since a "rib" was missing because of the old organ pipes, a new one has been constructed in the same style as all the others.

Registers for handling the air were specially designed and installed along the aisles. Built to resemble a large baseboard, they are part of the system of moving air slowly and quietly into the room.

LED lighting on the lancet windows will make them newly visible to passersby.

The adage about finding God in the details will be a major part of the story of the renovation of St. Peter’s Church. Around every corner of the renovated nave and soon-to-be-installed organ will be another small and beautiful detail to behold.

The lancet windows in the former narthex will be just such a detail. For years, they’ve appeared dark from the outside and largely ignored from the inside. However, the positioning of the new organ brought focus to these windows right away.

First, each windows is built around a theme. The one pictured above features “wisdom.” However, the text in the window would have been reversed when visible from the outside. St. Peter’s architects, Fryday and Doyne conceived a plan in which the windows were turned around and then lit from behind by 21st century LED lights. The lights use low voltage, put out barely any heat, and illuminate the windows to passersby in a way never before seen.

In prototype now, the “Wisdom” window makes a beautiful and colorful statement, especially contrasted with the century-old masonry. The rose window, which sits above the lancets, will also be more visible from the outside. New lighting to be installed atop the organ will help illuminate it. These are two examples of ways in which St. Peter’s will be inviting people in to our historic building.

Interior of the nave, Thursday, January 21.

Since the holidays have been over, a lot of progress has been made on the work inside the Church. As this picture shows, with Project Manager Mike Davis and Treasurer Dave Lavoie in the foreground, the rose window’s protective covering has been removed and the large scaffolding sitting in the “narthex” space has been disassembled. In fact, the portion ceiling under which it sat has been completely replaced with a new, firmer, most accoustically responsive solution. Underneath, ductwork occupies nearly the entire crawl space. And above that, a new subfloor is also nearly complete.

Farther up the nave, the space made ready for the super-quiet air handler (the component that pushes hot or cold air through the ducts or pulls air to be recycled out) is now fully occupied by the unit. Workers from Southern Comfort, the HVAC contractor have been hard at work assembling the unit. Once in operation, the unit will be activated so that the inside of the church can acclimate to once again to a steady temperature.

The new entrance on the garden side of the church, believed to have been a drop-off point at the turn of the 20th century for carriages entering from Church Street, is nearly ready to receive people once again. New steps at the front of the church will invite visitors entering from Tryon Street. One spectacular feature of the porch is the reuse of windows and a wood screen from the chapel.

Members of the Organ Committee, Building Committee, Vestry, and Parish attended the Open House for St. Peter's new organ, Opus 136.

A group of hardy travelers followed the remnants of Hurricane Ida up the East Coast for a whirlwind trip to the workshops at C. B. Fisk in Gloucester, Mass. This past weekend was Fisk’s Open House, an event held in honor of each instrument they build and the clients who commissioned it. So, Opus 136 makes its debut, mostly completed, in the “Erecting Room” at the Fisk workshops. Also in attendance were hundreds of organ enthusiasts, family members, and future customers–all eager to see Opus 136 for the first time.

For the St. Peter’s group, the journey started at Charlotte Douglas Airport for a 1:30 p.m. Friday meeting time. Organized by Junior Warden Sam Gardner, dubbed for the trip “Our Organic Leader” (he had the name badge to prove it), the travelers enjoyed a whirlwind trip. Minutes after arriving in Gloucester, employees from the Fisk Company ferried the group to the Gloucester House for a traditional New England Lobster bake. More than just lobster and talk of organs were on the menu though–the restaurant owner treated the group to a short of history of the area.

Not until ten o’clock the next morning could the group see the organ for the first time. After so many years of planning, fund raising, and building it was hard to imagine the thrill the group experienced. “Better than I could ever have imagined,” said Ben Outen, Organist and Choirmaster. He was literally speechless on seeing the organ for the first time. Organ Committee members Julie Clarkson, Alicia Shumate, and Nancy Jordan all had a chance to play Opus 136 for the first time, along with Ben, of course. While a number of the group had a tour of the Fisk workshops, a film crew interviewed Julie Clarkson and video taped Ben playing the new organ. (The film is being produced as part of Fisk’s planned fiftieth anniversary celebration in 2011.)

Opus 136, mostly assembled in the "Erecting Room."

After a lunch among the St. Peter’s group and Fisk employees, the doors opened to visitors. Hundreds of onlookers braved heavy rains for their chance to see Opus 136 (a few even had their chance to play). And before the travelers knew it, it was time to return to Charlotte.

The organ is nearly complete at this point. From the photograph at right and in the accompanying slideshow, you’ll notice that not all of the pipes are installed. In addition, the “battleship gray” coloring on the pipes is a protective coating for pre-installation and shipment. The coating will be removed after transport. For the next several weeks, the craftsmen at the C. B. Fisk Company will continue pre-installation in the erecting room, fine-tuning aspects of the instrument before it’s disassembled and shipped to Charlotte in early 2010. But what a sneak preview!

View more pictures in a slideshow of Opus 136.