The beginning!

Well, here it is: the OFFICIAL, un-official site for the restoration of the Baker Grand theatre organ!
I am very new to this, and very computer illiterate, so PLEASE be patient!

First, a little history of the organ, and how I have come into owning it.
The organ was built by the Robert-Morton Organ Company, of Van Nuys, California. It is a 2/4 type, with 3 tuned percussions.
What? Yeah, that's what I thought too when I first starting getting into this, and learning organ parlance. Let's break it down.
The "2" in the 2/4 stands for 2 manuals (manuals, you ask?) Yes, that is the term for the keyboards. There are 2 keyboards, each with a compass of 61 notes.
The "4" designates that it has 4 specific  speaking "ranks", or voices. This included the Tibia Clausa, the violin, the diapason and the vox humana.
The 3 tuned percussions include a xylophone, a harp and a set of chimes.
Okay, now we can communicate a little better!
The Baker Grand was originally built as a vaudeville/opera house, for live performances. It seated over 1,000 people, had 2 balconies, a fully equipped stage with fly-space and elevator stage lifts, and box seats on either side of the stage. When movies started edging out live performance, the simply placed a large screen on the stage and put in a projection booth. Of course, at first it was silent movies.
Well, silent movies were never really silent; they always had some type of music to go with the movie, provided live, either by a pianist or a small orchestra.
Several companies started adapting church organs to theatre organs. How? Well, a brilliant inventor named Hope-Jones worked with the Wurlitzer company, and developed the "unit" organ, among other innovations. In his developments, the pressures to play the pipes increased, the pipes were voiced more to imitate that of an orchestra, and the electro-pneumatic system was developed, which enable the organ console(where the organist sits and plays) to be able to be placed almost anywhere, and was connected to the pipes by means of electrical cables.
Wurlitzer had the "lion;s share" of the market, with Robert-Morton  being in the second position.
So when the silent movies became popular, the theatre owners had a choice: pay for a group of musicians to play for the film, or pay for one organist to play for the film. The answer was always the one organist.
The Baker Grand went with Robert-Morton, and in 1922 Mr. Roy Gimple- one of the chief installers with the company- installed the 2/4 organ into the Baker Grand.
Silent movies did not last for too long: as soon as the tecgnology existed to put sound and music onto the film, well...there was little use for musical accompaniment. Many of the fine organs feel into silence and neglect, and those that were not dismantled and removed were just left in place and forgotten.
Such was the case of the Baker Grand organ. It remained sitting front-and-center in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage, a mute testament to days gone by and its glory days. During these years of neglect, the pipe chambers were subject to prying individuals, who would sometimes remove one of the smaller, slender metal pipes. I mean, isn't that just the sort of thing that would be appealing to kids let out of stir? These metal rods that could be used for sword fighting, and in calmer moments could be blown into for musical toots!
Because of this, a goodly amount of the smaller metal pipes were removed and lost, and a lot of the remaining ones were badly damaged.
And to add to the insult, the old girl was subjected to having some parts removed from her so that a similar organ down in Baton Rouge could be  repaired. The B.G. owner was friendly with the party in Baton Rouge, and- because the organ here was already in bad shape- the out-of-towners were allowed to do the scavenging.
I have no idea what they took. That act took place in about '72. The one who removed the items died just 4 days after I started moving and inquiring about the organ.
The Baker Grand was destined to meet the wrecking ball in '74. Louis Spencer had the salvage and demolition rights. Spencer contacted Mr Bob Shumway to inform him that the building was to be torn down, and that if he wanted the organ, he could have it for a price. Mr Shumway would not meet the price, due to the fact that the organ was in bad shape and was missing a lot of its pipework.I believe Mr Spencer said that he had been "told" that the organ was worth thousands of dollars, and that's what he was looking for, as owner of the salvage rights.
Not able to strike the deal, that was the end of that.
Until about 3 days before the wrecking ball was to swing. Mr Shumway got a call from Mr Spencer saying that if he wanted the organ, to come get it. The price had dropped substantially. And Shumway was interested.
So Mr Shumway made some fast calls, secured a large, long cargo trailer, got his 14 year old son and the 2 employees from his shop and were at the theatre the next day. I believe they started at 8 in the morning and did not get through until 3 the next morning, literally beating the demolition team by about 5 hours.
And so, the organ was put away into storage. Mr Shumway had always wanted to restore the organ, and envisioned building a house that would display it. But time caught up to him-as it does to us all- and his health began to deteriorate, and he never got to put the organ back into working condition.
And so, it sat in storage for 40 years.
Then a few months back, I got a Facebook message from Elwood Black informing me that Ruth Powers-one of the children of Mr Shumway- had posted that if anyone wanted the old Baker Grand organ...COME GET IT!
And so, it has begun.
More stories to come.