American firm of reed and pipe organ manufacturers. It was founded in 1846 by H.P. Greene, a maker of melodeons (small reed organs), whose business was purchased in 1848 by Jacob Estey (b Hinsdale, NH, 30 Sept 1814; dBrattleboro, VT, 15 April 1890). Estey owned a successful plumbing business in Brattleboro (1835–57), but a fire destroyed it. After that, he devoted himself solely to musical instrument making. In 1860 Levi K. Fuller (1841–96), a gifted engineer who later became governor of Vermont, joined the firm, which was fast becoming a leading maker of parlour organs. Fuller was ultimately responsible for over 100 patents. In 1866 the firm was reorganized as the Estey Organ Co. with Jacob Estey as president, Fuller as vice-president, and Jacob’s son Julius (1845–1902) as treasurer. In 1880 the firm produced its 100,000th reed organ. The Estey Piano Co., a subsidiary, was formed in 1885 by the acquisition of the Arion Piano Co.; John Boulton Simpson was president, assisted by Jacob Gray Estey and J. Harry Estey. Under Julius Estey a pipe organ department was opened in Brattleboro in 1901. This was run by William E. Haskell (1865–1927), who began building organs in Philadelphia in 1889; he had also worked with Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt, but spent his most productive years with Estey. He was one of the most gifted inventors in modern organ building, with many patents to his name, including the so-called ‘Haskell bass’, a short pipe capable of producing the pitch and tone of a full-length open pipe by means of an inverted interior canister. During the early 20th century Estey built many organs for the church and home based on orchestral tonal principles.
Among the developments unique to Estey were innovations in console design. Consoles of Estey’s early electric-action pipe organs used stop-controls in the form of a miniature keyboard over the top manual; around 1923 the ‘Estey Luminous Stop Console’ was developed, in which the stop-controls were translucent buttons, lit from the inside to indicate when a stop was on. Later consoles, however, employed the more standard stop-tablets. In the early 1950s Estey collaborated with the makers of the Minshall organ to produce and market the Minshall-Estey electronic organ. From 1954 Estey manufactured its own electronic instrument, designed by Harald Bode; it had a six-octave keyboard and one octave of pedals. From the end of World War II the firm experienced financial difficulties and, after a series of reorganizations, declared bankruptcy in 1956. The Estey electronic organ was taken over by Magna Electronics in 1959 and was made for a few years in Torrance, California.
See also Reed organ.
J. Nadworny: ‘The Perfect Melodeon’, Business History Review, xxxiii/1 (1959), 43–59
W.H. Barnes: The Contemporary American Organ (Glen Rock, NJ, 8/1964)
R.F. Gellerman: The American Reed Organ (Vestal, NY, 1973)
O. Ochse: The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington, IN,1975)
R.B. Whiting: Estey Reed Organs on Parade (Vestal, NY, 1981)
D.H. Fox: ‘The Honorable Levi K. Fuller of Vermont’, ROS Bulletin, vi/1 (1987), 16–18
D.G. Waring: The Estey Reed Organ: Imagination, Music and Material Culture in 19th Century America (diss., Wesleyan U., 1987)
BARBARA OWEN