Organ Stop Pizza

We had the most fantastic experience last night - great pizza at this restaurant that was built to house the largest Wurlitzer Theatre pipe organ in the world. In the silent film era, motion picture Theatres had pit orchestras and pianists providing background music. As labour costs escalated, Theatre organs took over, described as part military band, part symphony and part theatrical sound effects. We heard them all last night. This organ originated at the Denver Theatre in 1927 but talking pictures came in, the 1930's depression took over and a fire silenced it in the 1930's. At the beginning of the evening, the organ and Organist are raised from the pit by a 8000 lb. rotating hydraulic elevator.

 

Organ Stop Pizza purchased this Organ as a 3 manual console with 15 ranks/sets of pipes, renovated it to a 23 rank Organ installing it in their original restaurant in 1975. Above the Organist is a set of dancing cats which move to rinky tink music he plays. They have continued to improve and add to this Theatre organ, including a massive set of 32' wood diaphones, resulting in 78 ranks, 17 tuned percussions, innumerable traps and effects with 6000 pipes.You can see the bellows below the pipes above, this on the left 1/2 of the room with  the drums on the mezzanine on the left with a grand piano behind and bongo drums and player piano to the right side.The 43' ceilings provide unparallelled acoustics.
There are 4 huge turbine blowers to provide the massive amount of wind need to power all of this.

The Organists are all world famous.It was a wonderful experience and if you are ever in Phoenix/Mesa area this should be on your list for fun and great food.