Inside Merrill Auditorium, in the City Hall of Portland, Maine, you face the Kotzschmar Memorial Organ. This is a pipe organ built in 1911 by the Austin Organ Co. as Opus 323 — at the time the second-largest organ in the world, and still the largest organ in Maine today. The instrument was donated to the city by Portland native Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, founder of the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia, given as a memorial to Hermann Kotzschmar.
Kotzschmar was a German-born musician who came to Portland in 1849, became the city’s most prominent musician, and lived here until his death in 1908. What you hear and see is also a piece of a broader American story: this organ is a prime example of the U.S. style of municipal, city-owned organs that were prevalent through the first half of the 20th century. It was the first municipal organ built in the United States and remains one of only two municipal organs still owned by a municipality — the other is the Spreckels Organ in San Diego, California.
Notice the ranks of pipes rising here, filling Merrill Auditorium and the City Hall that holds them.