Blessed Sacrament Church
Seattle, Washington

Bigelow & Co. Organ Builders
American Fork, Utah

By Michael Plagerman

In October 1898—just a decade after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, and little more than a year after the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush—eleven Catholic families petitioned Edward J. O’Dea, the bishop of Vancouver, Washington, to send priests to their rapidly growing community around the University of Washington.

In 1908, Bishop O’Dea responded by sending the Dominican Friars of the Western Province (the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus) to the University District, instructing them to erect a parish for the care of the surrounding community, including students at the University of Washington.

At the time, the University District was little more than forest wilderness, and the University of Washington was home to just 1,846 students. Since then, Blessed Sacrament has grown into one of the area’s most recognizable National Historic Landmarks, and the University of Washington has become one of the country’s premier public universities. Today, the church’s green spire is a staple of the Seattle skyline along I-5, and even used as a landmark by airline pilots during the approach to Sea-Tac International Airport.

When the architect Arnold Constable set about the design of the church, he intended an organ to occupy a prominent place. A single large organ chamber with two substantial tone openings was built in the north side of the sanctuary. Below this is a smaller room with direct access to the chamber, likely intended as a mechanical or blower room, though this is not specified on the blueprints.

A view from the top of the scaffolding

Although fortunate to have a large and dedicated congregation, many of whom helped in the construction of the church, Blessed Sacrament was not immune to the effects of the Great Depression. At its dedication in 1925, the church was far from having achieved its original design. The interior, which was meant to have ornate plasterwork and carvings, was nothing but bare brick, and the large organ chamber sat empty, with no attempt having been made to fill it. This remained the status quo until a Wurlitzer Electrostatic reed organ was installed in the 1940s. This humble instrument served the church until the 1960s, when the choir purchased a I/6 Vermeulen organ and placed it in the loft. This served as the only instrument in the church until 2014, when a II/12 organ was purchased from St. Dominic Church in San Francisco and installed in the south transept of the church.

That instrument was originally built by Henry Erben but had undergone substantial renovations in its lifetime. Within five years of its installation, the organ was experiencing substantial mechanical and tonal issues, and it was determined that, because of its small size and emerging reliability issues, the instrument would not suffice as the church’s final organ. Bids were sought from several builders in the late 2010s, and the church ended up purchasing Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1071. For reasons of storage and structure, it was not possible to put the Aeolian-Skinner in the organ chambers, and so it was proposed to put it in the gallery. Regrettably, the instrument was purchased before feasibility studies were complete, and their arrival made it clear that Opus 1071 would not fit in the loft with room left for choristers or the console. This instrument remained in storage until the spring of 2024, when it was given to a Los Angeles–area organbuilder.

Upon my arrival in 2022, I was charged with sorting out the church’s collection of instruments and finishing what earlier generations had started. It quickly became evident that the purchase of an existing organ for installation in the gallery was the most cost- and time-effective solution. It was determined that, to leave room for the choir, the organ would have to have mechanical action and be built in a vertical orientation on as small a footprint as possible. Although we were prepared to wait until a suitable instrument was identified, the search took only a month. Bigelow Opus 31, the Ruth and Paul Manz Organ, was being sold by the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) for an exceedingly reasonable $100,000. Some back-of-a-napkin measurements revealed that the instrument would not only fit but also had proportions that were almost identical to those of the large window in the rear of the church. Although the physical appearance of Opus 31 is certainly not in keeping with the church’s late Gothic Revival exterior, it harmonizes well with the sparse interior.

The updated wind tower

In December 2022, I flew to Chicago to evaluate the organ and was impressed by its warm, resonant sound, its variety of color, and its clever disposition. Immediately upon my return to Seattle, Blessed Sacrament made an offer to purchase the instrument. After considering several bids, LSTC accepted Blessed Sacrament’s offer in February 2023, with the stipulation that the organ had to be removed by the end of May of the same year, as the building had been sold to the University of Chicago, which did not want the instrument and required its timely removal. Additionally, Blessed Sacrament offered to keep the name of the organ, wishing to continue paying homage to the life and legacy of Ruth and Paul Manz, as well as to maintain the Manz Organ Recital Series. The latter would be changed from a monthly noontime recital to a quarterly evening concert.

The crew from Bigelow graciously agreed to remove the organ from LSTC and move it into storage in the north transept at Blessed Sacrament, directly under two of the tone openings of the organ chamber whose purpose (if not whose space) the Bigelow would soon fill. The instrument arrived in June 2023 and was unloaded by a large group of very excited parishioners. A temporary wall was built around the organ until Bigelow could return for its installation in the loft.

The steel girders for the rear window

Unfortunately, on the Thursday prior to Palm Sunday of 2024, the church was flooded due to a ruptured fitting in a vestibule bathroom. Over six inches of water pooled in the front of the church, submerging all of the components of the organ that were sitting on the floor. Thankfully, the choir was in rehearsal at the time of the incident and immediately tore an opening in the temporary wall and began moving organ pieces onto the pews and out of harm’s way. More parishioners and the Seattle Fire Department quickly arrived, and within an hour and a half the entire nine-ton instrument was sitting high and dry, covering all of the church’s seating, less than 48 hours before Palm Sunday liturgies were set to begin. On Friday morning, parishioners helped to unwrap all the components that had been submerged, thoroughly dry them, place them in new boxes with new padding, and return them to the enclosure. Within two hours, the entire organ was returned to its “cage,” as the congregants had come to call it. Thanks to the efforts of the fire department, the parishioners, the choirs, and the music staff, not a single component of the organ sustained any damage.

Meanwhile, substantial renovations had to be made to the loft to distribute the organ’s weight into two large masonry arches whose columns extend to the ground. An enormous scaffold was erected all the way to the 68-foot peak of the ceiling. A set of steel girders was erected around the window to secure it against future earthquakes, and a steel subfloor was built in the footprint of the organ to support its weight. The entire gallery floor, which was originally a set of wide concrete steps, was then made level with the steel framework. Two layers of three-quarter-inch plywood were used on the wall behind the organ and on the floor, both to eliminate any possible resonance from walking on the floors and to create a sufficiently reflective surface to push the instrument’s sound into the room.

In June 2024, the installation crew from Bigelow arrived and began to move the organ into the 35-foot-high gallery. Work was paused in August for the American Institute of Organbuilders convention but resumed after two weeks to reach completion in September. The instrument was originally winded from a second-story room behind the organ, so a new winding system was devised. The original bellows tower was raised so that the blower would fit within its base, and new windtrunks were made that climb to the second-story level of the original wind inlet for the manual divisions. The Pedal division is winded through a new line that runs a short distance horizontally from the bellows into the chest. Very little voicing was needed to make the instrument suit its new, much larger home. The Pedal wind pressure was raised from 3.5 to 3.9 inches, and all else was left essentially as it was.

The pastor surveying the church from within the Swell division

The resulting organ is beyond anything that could have been hoped for. Not only is its appearance an easy fit for the church, but its sound is decidedly impressive. Although the interior brick is unsealed and the room is thus not terribly reverberant, the organ fills the space completely, giving one the impression of being enveloped. Soft registrations are clearly audible, and the full organ is grand and commanding but never uncomfortable. One of the more interesting effects of the instrument’s placement is that the crescendo created by opening the swell box is almost completely linear; with the box half open the division sounds at roughly half volume. We have theorized that because the box initially opens to the side and speaks into the rough-hewn unsealed wooden boards of the ceiling, the initial large crescendo is mitigated, allowing for that linear progression in volume. Whatever the reason, it makes the Swell exceptionally effective.

The organ was dedicated on September 21, 2024, by Paul Tegels, professor emeritus of organ at Pacific Lutheran University. After speeches by leadership from both the Lutheran School of Theology and Blessed Sacrament, the instrument’s sound was finally revealed to a crowd of over 600 attendees with repertoire by Bach, Vaughan Williams, Matter, and Guilmant.

The organ convincingly plays repertoire from more genres than one might expect, given its somewhat Central German 18th-century-inspired stoplist. The strategic inclusion of stops like the 16′ Clarinet and 8′ Harmonic Flute, along with the generous voicing of the 8′ stops in general, makes possible the playing of music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Preparations were made in the installation of Opus 45 (its new designation) for the placement of an electrically keyed chamade to be placed on the gallery rail. That placement was decided due to a lack of space behind the impost for the installation of another windchest. This rank will be identically scaled to the Great 8′ Trumpet, a practice used by Bigelow in several of their organs. This gives the instrument both a substantial solo reed as well as a final, brighter, and louder reed to add to full organ. Additionally, the already electrically keyed 16′ Bourdon will be used to create a 32′ Resultant. These additions and the replacement of the organ’s combination action system will take place sometime in 2026.

We at Blessed Sacrament could not be happier with this instrument. It has tremendously enhanced our music program already, and all three of the organists currently on staff are thrilled with its capabilities. Further, we cannot speak highly enough of the team at Bigelow & Co. Mike Bigelow, David Chamberlain, and the entire crew of dedicated craftspeople were both expert and timely in their communication and production, in addition to being enjoyable company during the project. I was fortunate to be substantially involved in the installation and will treasure my time working with this wonderful group of artisans. Countless generations of Seattleites will enjoy the work of the Bigelow team as this organ comforts, uplifts, and inspires its listeners in this historic space.

Michael Plagerman has been director of sacred music at Blessed Sacrament Church since November 2022. He holds degrees from Pacific Lutheran University (BM), the University of Notre Dame (MSM), and Cornell University (MFA, DMA).

Cover photo by Willi Pixel; 
article photos by Michael Plagerman.