When Radio City Music Hall was planned in the early 1930s, S.L. Roxy Rothafel, chief of architecture and construction for the hall and its "sister" Center Theater at Sixth and 49th planned to install the largest theater organ ever built. He was best aquainted with the Kimball Organ Company having given this firm the contract for three organs at the great theater bearing his name on Seventh Avenue so Kimball was contacted to bid on a large organ for the Music Hall. Legend has it that the Rockefeller board of trustees felt that the most prestigious theater in the country should have an organ built by the country's top theater organ company so the contract was eventually awarded to the Wurlitzer Organ Company of North Tonawanda, NY. Strange as it may seem, the Kimball specification was retained. Even though the organ was built by Wurlitzer, this may have been the influence of Roxy, but what really transpired is unknown today. Although Kimball built many theater organs, they never built the pure, thoroughbred theater organ that Wurlitzer did.
The organ is played by two identical four-manual consoles which are completely independent of each other and can sustain separate registrations, unlike the more usual installation in which a second console was a slave to the first. Its 4,178 pipes are installed in eight chambers divided on either side of the stage.
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