St. Lawrence Church
Roman Catholic Parish in St. Elizabeth, Missouri
Geo. Kilgen & Sons Organ Company - 1914
Restoration - 2023
About the Instrument
St. Lawrence Catholic Church in St. Elizabeth, Missouri is a small country parish sitting on the main square of the town. The cornerstone of the church was laid in 1905 and the church was constructed of bricks fired on site from local clay. The organ by the Geo. Kilgen & Son Organ Company of St. Louis, Missouri was installed at the end of 1914. Until Vatican II the organ served the faithful in the parish before liturgical tastes changed and the organ was mothballed for twelve years. By the end of the 1970s, the parish contacted a local organ builder to perform a check to make sure the organ would still be playable before the instrument was returned to service. The organ was provided a blower, the main reservoir was re-leathered, and some modifications were made to the winding system of the organ, as well as the replacement of the top octave of the 2' on the Great.
We had been asked to examine the instrument to see what was needed to clean and restore the instrument in the spring of 2023. A proposal was created to completely clean the instrument, provide new leather nuts and bushings for the action, re-cover the manual keyboards and pedalboard, provide a new blower and wind lines, new slides on the pipework, new stopper leather, restoration of the façade pipework, and restorative voicing performed on the organ.
