Barton Organ Company

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The Barton Organ Company was an American pipe organ manufacturer during the age of silent movies. 5th largest builder of theater instruments in the nation, Barton focused on the mid-West market almost exclusively. The small factory seldom sent instruments further away than the distance a Pullman sleeper car could travel in one night. For this reason, the instruments are almost completely unknown outside of this relatively small area.

The company built about 250 theatre organs from 1918 to 1931.^[1]

Dan Barton's first experiments in producing equipment to accompany silent films was a set of electrically operated bells which he recalls formed a musical scale. Mounted around the interior of the theater, these were operated by the pit drummer who was performing foley and various other sound effects for the picture. After seeing the highly enthuastic reception of his invention, Dan began toying with the idea of a more elaborate mechanism.

In 1918, the Bartola Musical Instrument Company was formed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin by Dan Barton, who came from Amherst, Wisconsin. He began with the development and manufacture of Bartola pit organs. Dan was assisted by Butch Littlefield and Walter Gollnick and was financed in the early days by a partner, W. G. Maxcy. Later on, probably during the boom years of theater organ building, the company was simply called the Barton Organ Company. It ceased business in about 1931, soon after the advent of "talking pictures" lessened the demand for theatre organs.

The first organ they produced was the Bartola. It was a small pipe organ in a case that sat in a theater’s orchestra pit. It was played from a keyboard on a stand that swung around above the keys of a piano. There were four models. The larger ones had several cases—one for orchestral pipe ranks and the other for percussions and various sound effects. A footboard placed around the piano pedals was used to play the effects. Bartolas were mainly for small theaters. Interestingly, drawing directly from Dan Barton's earlier experiments with electrically operated bells, most of the traps and other percussions were powered directly by electric solenoids and not pneumatics as with most other contemporary pit organs and photoplayers.

As large theaters were built, Dan Barton began to build theater organs. Increased demand and production scale necessitated outsorcing some componants and materials from Dennison, Gottfried, Meyer, Wangerin, and Geneva have been identified with extant instruments. In its heyday, Barton had over 150 employees.

The largest Barton was installed in the Chicago Stadium and had six manuals as well as over 800 stop tabs which was sadly destroyed by fire in October of 1996 and is without question, the single most tragic loss in the entire history of 20th century organ building. Never had an instrument on such an heroic scale been executed. Powered by a 100 HP Spencer blower, the sound of the organ (in the words of the reviewer of Marcel Dupre's 1929 dedicatory recital) was immense- arresting even: "...It was as if even the most ardent lover of chocolate soda were hurled into a swimming pool filled with it..." Stadium organist All Melgard famously took out an entire tier of clearstory windows and most of the light bulb filaments in the early days while executing an FFFF (+!) rendition of the national anthem to stop a riot which erupted in the early days at a boxing match.

Currently, the largest extant and unaltered Barton is opus 234, a 4/21 rank instrument for the Hollywood Theater in Detroit which is undergoing a museum quality restoration by Steven Ball [1] who is a specalist in the work of the Barton Firm. He is also is also involved with the Barton organ at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor [2] which is one of the most frequently heard instruments in the country.

Barton also manufactured a lift that raised a console to stage level for performances. Recognzable because of its distincitve four posts, the mechanism was ingeniously concealed therein and (of great interest to small to mid-sized theater builders) did not require the drilling of a central screw shaft into the floor of the orchestra pit for its operation.

Some church organs were also built by Barton and were known as Maxcy–Barton organs which was a later incarnation of the firm after the advent of talking pictures in 1927. One notable organ is a three manual instrument still in use at St. Mary Parish of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.