Wurlitzer Style 30-A Mandolin PianOrchestra
Philipps Pianella Model 30 (Monopol-Xylophon)

Original Location: Auburn, New York

Original Catalogue Specifications:

61 Note Musical Scale:

Chronological History:

Circa 1908
Manufactured by J.D. Philipps & Sons, Bockenheim, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

Circa 1908/1909
Imported and sold by Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, New York.

Circa 1909/1910
Purchased by the Curtin Hotel, Auburn, New York.

Sometime before 1910 the Curtin Hotel of Auburn, New York, acquired a Wurlitzer style 30A Mandolin PianOrchestra. After an unknown number of years the PianOrchestra was sold to Fred Volkman, and moved to Skaneateles Falls, New York.

Circa 1920
Purchased by Fred Volkman, Skaneateles Falls, New York.

Sometime during the early 1920s, Fred Volkman bought the PianOrchestra and moved it, along with himself, into the old Slater Hotel, located in Skaneateles Falls, New York, not far from the town of Skaneateles. The Slater Hotel was an old, once stately two-story wooden structure. It had been purchased by "Freddie," becoming the Volkman Hotel. As the story goes, Volkman had been literally run out of town due to his "socially unacceptable," illicit activities, whatever they might have been. Freddie then set up operations in Skaneateles Falls. The PianOrchestra occupied a spot just inside the doorway in the upstairs grand ballroom. It was a large, almost square, room, with a very high, ornately painted ceiling. Several very tall, stately windows adorned both of the outside facing walls.

Circa mid 1930s
The Volkman Hotel becomes the Martin Hotel.

Sometime in the mid 1930s the Volkman Hotel was sold, becoming the Martin Hotel. The condition of the PianOrchestra at the time is unknown. However, judging from the deplorable and filthy condition of the PianOrchestra when it was discovered in the early 1950s, it is likely that the PianOrchestra had stopped playing long before the hotel became the Martin Hotel. All that remained was the case and whatever was still inside it. No trace of any fragment of music roll or any of the many missing parts could be found within the hotel.

Martin Hotel circa 1966 (formerly Volkman Hotel)Around 1966, David Bowers and I, Terry Hathaway, visited the site to sample its ambiance. The old hotel was (and maybe still is) a large, square, two-story wooden structure. A smaller two-story boxy add-on was tacked onto the backside of the building. The upstairs "grand" ballroom was in the front corner of the hotel, with two large windows facing the front and three windows along the side, which overlooked a side street. Noteworthy, was the spacious front porch that stretched fully along the two access sides of the hotel. It provided comfortable admittance to the seemingly unused front or main entrance, which faced the pair of main rail lines that shot straight through the center of town, as well as the side entrance, which was the door to the hotel bar, currently the only entrance apparently used for public access. The hotel sat at one end of town, banked by a forest of trees on the far side. The town of Skaneateles Falls basically consisted of a single row of tall, false fronted, dilapidated and decaying wooden buildings that stretched perhaps several hundred yards along both sides of a main railroad thoroughfare. A bumpy roadway access trailed along both sides of the railroad, permitting automobile access to the grungy, once colorfully painted stores.

We entered Skaneateles Falls from the "side" street that ran alongside the Martin Hotel. It seemed to be more of a main street than the town's actual "main" street, which straddled the main rail lines. This side street, forming the only apparent crossroads in the whole town, continued across the railroad tracks, then going between buildings on the other side it eventually disappeared into a heavy thicket of trees in the distance. Arriving in town had quite an impact on me. We had been winding through beautiful semi-forested countryside, dotted with occasional buildings, when, after jogging around a tree-shrouded bend to skirt the rear of a large, old wooden building, we were suddenly there, in Skaneateles Falls, alongside the old Martin Hotel. The transition from placid countryside to town was swift, and before I fully realized that we had arrived, Dave had pulled over and parked along the side of the hotel. Abruptly, there it was, the "hallowed place," neon beer ad signs blinking in the dingy barroom windows.

Not far from the hotel, alongside the main rail tracks was a large white sign with bold, black lettering bearing the name "Skaneateles Junction." Although this sign, the only obvious landmark providing a name for the locale, has mistakenly been used to denote the geographic location where the PianOrchestra was discovered, the term Skaneateles Junction, in actuality, only denotes a railroad spur that separates from the main rail line. This single track, heading off toward the town of Skaneateles, curved around the front and side of the hotel, following along the far edge of the side street behind us. It went on down the side street and seemed to disappear straightaway into a thicket of dense trees. The side street curved to the right, behind the town buildings, and went off in another direction. The roads were basically dirt, with some signs of having been graveled, or if paved, they were in very disintegrated condition. It was all very picturesque.

We entered the bar, going in the side door. It stank of a musty, grimy odor. Apart from a bartender, we could see no one else in the place, but behind a small partition against one wall we could clearly hear someone peeing. Dave asked the bartender if it was okay for us to look around and take some pictures, explaining why we were there. Grunting us permission, we moved down a dark hallway toward the grand staircase that lead up to the second floor ballroom. The decor was heavy and genuinely atrocious. The lower part of the hallway wall was painted purple, with a perhaps eight-inch high horizontal, dingy gold stripe that separated the purple from the faded lime-green upper wall color. The gold banding was itself highlighted every eight feet or so with a large golden triangle that extended upward from the band. Everything felt greasy, grungy and grimy, and was literally filled with the dank, rotten, stench of decay. It seemed to be a classic "dump," in the true sense of the word. I remember walking up the wide, grand staircase, going up to the second floor. I reached for the banister, the steps creaking and feeling unsteady, but immediately withdrew my hand after touching it. The wooden banister was repulsively sticky. I never wanted to touch the walls or fixtures after that.

At the top of the stairs one could go one of three ways. To the right were bedrooms that could be accessed from the stairway landing and a long hallway. Straight-ahead was a door, no longer in use, that led out onto the top of the front porch. To the left was the double-door width entrance to the ballroom. The upstairs walls were painted dark green, except for the ballroom, which was the most cheerfully painted room in the whole place. My heart fluttered with excitement as I entered the ballroom. It was immense. Two or three tall windows along each of the two outside ballroom walls admitted a dusty light, the windowpanes being filthy. Sunlight could be seen peaking through a few of the larger holes in the ballroom ceiling. A couple of surprised bats darted about the room and quickly disappeared. It was a very large room, perhaps almost square, with a 16 or 18 foot high ceiling, which was much higher than the PianOrchestra was tall. A clearly defined outline made of relatively clean wall next to the main entrance door showed exactly where the 30A PianOrchestra had once stood. Evidently the machine had been pushed up close to the wall, as the outline of the case was sharply distinct and unmistakable, even to the outline of small moldings on each side of the case. This would have made it nearly impossible to service the piano, as there were no casters on the PianOrchestra to enable moving it away from the wall for piano tuning.

As large as the PianOrchestra was, its outline did not seem so big when compared to the overall extent of the room and its high ceiling. Junk and trash was strewn everywhere, scattered and piled in heaps over the wide planked, sagging wood floor. The "grand ballroom" was not so grand anymore. The room had a dank feeling, although it had obviously once been very elegant, probably quite spectacular when new. The plastered walls and ceiling were painted a richly hued blue, with the window frames and wainscoting being an off-white. The drooping ceiling, although pocked with several gaping holes that leaked tiny beams of golden sunlight, was still beautifully decorated with an ornate and vibrantly colored design, delicately painted a long time ago. Underneath, a tired wooden floor drooped so much between supporting timbers that I wondered if it might collapse under my added weight.

After spending some time in the ballroom looking for any forgotten Wurlitzer parts or rolls, we ventured down the upstairs hall looking into a few of the guestrooms. They all appeared about the same. The walls were painted a medium shade of green that had darkened with grime and time. Each room had a single window, and each room was cold, dark and dreary. There was an iron bed, a mattress fitted with a green bedspread (similar to the color of the walls), and a few odd pieces of simple furniture. The bedspreads were snugly fitted, some with many spots and soiled areas that were plainly evident. I would not have stayed overnight in this place!

After we had finished our exploring and were standing along side Dave's car, getting ready to leave, a nattily dressed man rushed up to us, loudly demanding that we hand over the photographs we had taken. He looked like a well-dressed gangster, right out of an old Hollywood movie. Dave, with some quick thinking, pulled out a copy of "Put Another Nickel In" and showed the man that we were just photographing the ballroom for historical reasons. The man finally relented, becoming somewhat relaxed and friendly, introducing himself as, if my recollection is correct, Frenchy DeVoe. We presumed he had probably arrived in one of the "fancy" automobiles that had parked alongside the hotel after we had entered. At the time, we thought it strange that expensive cars with extravagantly dressed people were pulling up to such a dump, but decided that we best leave things alone and get out before something unpleasant happened. We never went back.

Circa 1957
Discovered by Larry Givens, Wexford, Pennsylvania.

Larry Givens, of Wexford, Pennsylvania, discovered the forlorn 30A PianOrchestra in the long-abandoned upstairs ballroom of the Martin Hotel circa 1957. Larry had heard about the existence of the machine from his friend Dick Shattuck, of Eldred, Pennsylvania. So, during summer camp training (at Hancock Field in Syracuse, New York) with his Pennsylvania Air National Guard unit, Larry drove to Skaneateles Falls in search of the instrument. After arriving at the hotel, where the PianOrchestra was supposed to be located, Larry described the instrument and its imposing dimensions to the manager. The manager then assured Larry that no such machine was in the hotel, nor could he recall ever having seen such a thing.

"Mind if I look around the hotel, anyway?" asked Larry Givens.

"No, go right ahead," replied the manager.

After a little searching the PianOrchestra was found in plain view, just inside the door of the second floor grand ballroom, exactly where it had been since the 1920s. Larry writes: "The entrance to the ballroom was at one of the corners of the room. As I walked into the room, I saw nothing even faintly resembling a PianOrchestra. I walked out into the middle of the room, and then turned around -- and then I saw it! I had walked into the room directly past the side of the PianOrchestra's case, without noticing what it was! It had been right beside the entrance doors."

Having found the machine, the manager of the hotel was called to the ballroom, Larry pointing out the obvious PianOrchestra.

"So that's what that big old thing is," he said. "I never looked inside of the cabinet and always wondered what it was."

Larry decided that the PianOrchestra "was bigger game than he could handle." So, when he got back to the air base in Syracuse late that afternoon, while sitting in his car -- a 1954 Plymouth station wagon -- he immediately wrote to Roy Haning and Neal White, giving them all the information he had regarding the PianOrchestra. "They were into those big instruments," Larry said, "so I thought they should have a crack at this one."

At the time, Larry Givens knew of no collectors who had any idea what a large Wurlitzer PianOrchestra might sound like. When questioned during a circa 1969 visit to Hathaway & Bowers, Inc., Santa Fe Springs, California, Larry remarked that he just assumed that large orchestrions, like the PianOrchestra, did not sound good, although, as he later admitted, he had no idea whatsoever how a restored PianOrchestra might sound. So, as far as Larry was concerned, the PianOrchestra would never sound "good," it would not be an easy thing to remove from the upstairs hotel ballroom, and it would be extremely difficult to restore, considering its poor condition and that it was missing a lot of critical parts. This was a time when machines missing parts and difficult to restore were passed over for something that either still played, or was in pristine condition. It was not until Larry's visit to Hathaway & Bowers, Inc., when he heard a PianOrchestra for the first time, ironically the very one he had once discovered in Skaneateles Falls, that he realized his mistake.

Circa 1957
Roy Haning and Neal White collection, Troy, Ohio.

Once Haning and White received the letter from Larry Givens, providing details regarding the PianOrchestra, Roy Haning said they wasted no time driving to Skaneateles Falls, fully prepared to haul the PianOrchestra home. Roy Haning once remarked that after they dragged the PianOrchestra out of the Martin hotel, loading it into a trailer hitched behind their station wagon, they drove fast for about one hundred miles, before stopping to cover the machine with a tarp. They wanted as much of the encrusted filth to blow off and away as possible. The big Wurlitzer 30A PianOrchestra sat untouched at Haning and White's place for many years, when Dave Bowers purchased it about 1965.

Circa 1965
David Bowers collection, Vestal, New York.

About 1965 the PianOrchestra became part of the David Bowers collection, Vestal, New York. The PianOrchestra was set up for display in a specially constructed, high ceiling, music room. Up to this time, and during the time it was part of the Bowers collection, there was no discernible attempt to restore any aspect of the PianOrchestra, other than wipe off some of the encrusted grime.

When I first met Dave Bowers in 1966, he showed me pictures of his collection, which, at the time, contained four PianOrchestras. Of the four examples, only one was operational, a style 12, Mandolin PianOrchestra, which Bowers had acquired from the Otto Carlsen collection in Monrovia, California. Two machines, the Wurlitzer style 30A PianOrchestra, from Skaneateles Falls and a style 32 Concert PianOrchestra from Chilton, Wisconsin were completely unrestored and missing parts. The fourth instrument, a style 32-A Concert PianOrchestra from Leadville, Colorado, was complete and in very nice original condition, although not playing. Dave Bowers was attempting to get it playing.

Circa 1965
Terry Hathaway collection, Santa Fe Springs, California.

Terry Hathaway's unrestored 30A PianOrchestra soon after receiving it.I bought the 30A PianOrchestra from Dave Bowers in mid to late 1965, seeing only four little black & white Polaroid snapshots of it, as it appeared in Bowers' music room, along with a brief description. Loving the machine from my first glance at the pictures, I carried those tiny photographs around wherever I went, looking at them frequently. Then, one fine warm and sunny day, maybe in August, the 30A PianOrchestra arrived in Santa Fe Springs via a Mayflower Van Lines truck. The exciting moment had arrived, as the deeply padded moving quilts were unwrapped, revealing, piece by piece, the magnificent machine. It sparkled to my happy eyes, its dark, silvered oak case, which was beautifully embellished with tarnished brass-work and gilded ornamentation, glittered with an ancient luster as it met the summer sunlight. The art-glass consisted of a geometric design, using clear chipped glass mounted in brass piping. There was a golf-ball-sized hole in one pane of glass. The instrument was beautiful, even though it still carried a hefty coating of sticky Skaneateles Falls grime.

All the wooden pipes were missing, as were the bass drum, snare drums, cymbal (the drum actions were present), the triangle and tambourine, (the reiterating triangle and tambourine actions were present). A basic cleaning and scrubbing of the case exterior and interior mechanisms was the first order of business. No restoration work was done until the instrument had been observed and studied in detail, noting unused screw holes, impressions in the wood, shadows in the clear interior wood finishes, and so on. Noteworthy in the trapwork instrumentation are the castanets, which are an early style mechanism consisting of two large castanet halves, one stationary, the other fastened to a pivoted lever operated by a large pneumatic. It produced more of a wood-block tapping sound rather than what might be expected from a set of castanets, as with the later style castanet action.

A few candle wax drippings and at least one wax ring, where a candle had been affixed for light, were noted on the top, left side of the decorative wooden shelf located just under the roll changer. There were two charred spots on the underside of the xylophone support shelf, the main horizontal support board above the roll changer. Obviously, a candle has been used in this area on many occasions, a few times as a light source when adjusting or repairing the left side of the roll changer mechanism.

30A PianOrchestra soon after restoration by Terry Hathaway.The case was refinished by a Mr. Carter, a local man who worked out of his garage in Baldwin Park, California, someone I had met through another collector. It was Carter's first attempt at a filled pore glazing type finish. Neither Carter nor I knew of anyone who knew how to correctly use the glazing compounds for this type of filled-pore finish. Carter experimented, trial by fire, so to speak, until passable results were obtained. Mr. Carter, a genuinely friendly man, worked without any provisions for adequate ventilation, constantly inhaling or absorbing the toxic lacquer solvent fumes. His health was obviously declining, probably exacerbated by his wife, who would come out to the garage (her bleached blond hair straggly and unkempt) and loudly curse and complain, constantly nagging and putting him down. He just kept working, sort of ignoring her, while I maintained a quiet demeanor, so as to not become one of her targets.

Except for re-leathering the pump, replacing the missing wooden pipe-work and some metal work, the restoration was done by myself. I found old drums of the correct size that were fitted with Wurlitzer style hardware. The tambourine was copied from the style 40 PianOrchestra then belonging to Otto Carlsen, of Monrovia, California. Richard Fague, of San Francisco, did the metal work on the tambourine, stamping out brass bangles like the original. The pipe-work was replaced by selecting specific note ranges from appropriately voiced pipe organ pipe sets, and then modifying and/or making new toes.

Circa 1970
Susie and George Coade Collection, Carlsbad, California.

The Coade collection consisted of many fine coin pianos and several large orchestrions. The PianOrchestra, situated in a newly constructed "piano house," was featured in many local tours and Musical Box Society and AMICA meetings.

1977
Nielsen Collection, California.

The PianOrchestra remained housed with the Coade collection until July of 1979, whereupon, after making the final payment for the machine, it was trucked to Berkeley, California, in time for the Musical Box Society Convention, which was being hosted by the Golden Gate chapter. The PianOrchestra was set up in the Albany Middle School library, Albany, California, where it entertained school children and other visitors for many years. Then it was moved into a storage building, located only a few blocks away from the school, where it remained until recently, when it was shipped back to Southern California for safe storage.

1999
Ames Collection, California.

The PianOrchestra remains in excellent playing condition, requiring only minor tuning and normal maintenance. It sits alongside other beautifully restored automatic musical instruments of the same general era.

Credits:

Information provided by Terry Hathaway, Larry Givens, Dave Bowers and Al Nielsen.

Photographs:

Circa 1912 Wurlitzer catalogue; Don Pease; Dave Bowers; and Terry Hathaway.