BOARDWALK HALL ORGAN CHAMBERS UPDATED INFORMATION

By: David Preston, ACIA at Boardwalk Hall

Under Contract #11 & #11A David Preston of the Atlantic County Improvement Authority managed the clean-up of all 10 organ chambers at the Historic Boardwalk Hall.  All of the chambers were properly cleaned and HEPA vacuum within the guidelines of the Asbestos Control and Licensing Act.  (NJSA 34:5A-32 et.seq., P.L. 1984) and the Uniform Construction Code Act.  (New Jersey S.A. 52-17D-119 et.seq., P.L. 1984).

The fire suppression system was installed and completed in a safe and professional manner.  Many of the chambers have both pendent and side wall heads installed in order to suppress the fire in any direction.  The heads in the cambers are protected with heavy metal baskets to prevent accidental triggering or ruptures.  Each chamber also has its own individual water leak detection panel located outside of the chamber doors.  Each detection panel is tried into the master control panel located in the fire command center which is manned 24 hours a day – 7 days a week. 

All of the old chamber entrance doors have been replaced.  Each organ chamber has new state-of-the-art 45 minute fire rated doors.  Gone are the old hasps and padlocks from yesteryear.

The multitude of old incandescent light bulbs in the chambers has been replaced with modern high-brightness fluorescent bulbs.  The results are amazing and now the view from the hall into the Right Stage chamber is quite remarkable.  You can see all four levels of pipe work more clearly than ever before.

A remarkable long-forgotten animated scale model of Boardwalk Hall façade was recently discovered and restored by David Preston, A.C.I.A. representative of Boardwalk Hall.  The model was built presumably prior to the hall’s construction.

When Senator Emerson Richards was asked to design a pipe organ to fill what would be one of the most cavernous public assembly rooms in the world, his genius extended to creating a precursor to today’s modern motion picture theatre stereophonic surround sound systems.  The Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ has huge main left and right chambers flanking the proscenium of the stage – a fair comparison to the left and right channels of contemporary high fidelity stereophonic sound systems.

The four Gallery chambers of the Midmer-Losh organ are located in the side walls of the auditorium in much of the same ways as surround sound speakers are located in motion picture and home systems.  They each created separate and distinct signals, but the concept of surrounding the enveloping listeners with music in such a manner is definitely pause for thought and a tribute to Richard’s creative thinking at the time.

To cap things off, Richards added overhead sound sources in the ceiling of the auditorium with the beautiful Fanfare and Echo organs, high above the listener’s head.  These were again placed out in the Hall and away from the main left and right chambers.  This places the organ far ahead of current theatre surround sound systems.  Experimental motion picture sound systems are only now beginning to experiment with sound source from above and below the seated audiences.

When this extraordinary organ is fully restored and one can again hear it in its entirety, it should have audience-pulling power like nothing else in the world