Organ music has been an integral part of Christian Science Sunday church services from the earliest days, well before these weekly meetings took the form and structure that attendees are familiar with today. (In fact, at services in Boston during the 1880s, the congregation was often led and supported in hymn-singing by a small choir of basses, tenors, contraltos, and sopranos.1)
Among Longyear Museum’s collection of historic artifacts is an organ (pictured above) owned and used by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston during this formative period of early public worship, when Christian Science Sunday services were held in the city’s famed Chickering Hall auditorium from 1885 to early 1894. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer, Founder, and Leader of Christian Science, delivered the sermon at the first service in Chickering, on October 25, 1885, based on John 21:5.2
Longyear’s Estey Reed Organ
This historic organ came to the Museum in 1965 from First Church of Christ, Scientist, Dover, New Hampshire. Archival records note that, in 1906, a “Mr. J. H. Thompson of Boston, who had purchased the organ from The Mother Church, offered to let the Dover church enjoy the use of it.”3 After a remodeling nearly six decades later, that church gave the organ to Longyear, where it was displayed in the music room in the Longyear family’s mansion in Brookline, Mass., where the museum was then housed.
Built by the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont, this handsome instrument produces sound by causing air to move over “reeds,” or thin, flexible strips of metal, which vibrate and create sound. Established in 1846 (and shuttered in 1960), Estey was one of the best-known organ builders in the country—and the largest employer in Vermont in its heyday, known for providing a sense of community and care for its 600 employees.4 Over time, they produced more than half a million organs, with the reed organ style being a bestseller. Also referred to as a “parlor” organ, the reed organ was among “the most popular instruments of its day, gracing both chapels and fashionable American parlors.” Its relatively compact size, affordability, and ease of maintenance contributed to its popularity.5
Music and Worship at Chickering Hall
As noted earlier, it was nearly 140 years ago, in October of 1885, that the rapidly growing Christian Science movement in Boston began holding Sunday services in the second-floor auditorium at Chickering Hall, on Tremont Street by the Boston Common. The area was famous as Boston’s “Piano Row,” housing showrooms for Steinway, Steinert, Vose, and Wurlitzer, among other manufacturers.
Not surprisingly—given that it was designed by the Chickering piano company—“the acoustic qualities of the new hall were excellent,” remarks William Lyman Johnson, who attended those services as a youth and includes details in his History of the Christian Science Movement.6 Musical accompaniment at initial services was provided by a piano—probably a Chickering, given that the company owned the premises. However, befitting the needs of choral music and hymnology at the time, the piano was soon replaced by an organ.7
The move to Chickering Hall had not been made without some trepidation. The previous location for Christian Science services, Hawthorne Hall on nearby Park Street, could hold about 225 people. At over 460 seats, Chickering’s capacity was more than double that number. Would the band of faithful attendees be swallowed up in such a cavernous space? Would they ever fill it?
The early workers soon had their answer, when Mrs. Eddy led the opening service: “The filling of the hall on this first Sunday was a most inspiring achievement,” Johnson writes, and “brought rebuke as well as courage to those who had argued that it [Chickering] was altogether too large.”8
At that same service, it was also announced that the first Christian Science Sunday School would be organized, holding sessions at 1:45 P.M., with church services at 3:00 P.M. For several years, the congregation used the Social Hymn and Tune Book published by the American Unitarian Society, 1880. “While the words were not all that could be desired, they fulfilled their mission very well,” remarks Johnson, a knowledgeable musician who later wrote the accompaniment to two of Mrs. Eddy’s poems in the Christian Science Hymnal (253 and 306).
