Cannon Memorial Chapel, before the organ (The Web, 1931)

When the Henry Mansfield Cannon Memorial Chapel was officially dedicated, six days before the Stock Market Crash of 1929, it did not have an organ.  During the hard times that followed, wealthy donors were scarce, so in 1933 the sophomore class of Westhampton College took matters into their own hands.  With proceeds from dances and benefit performances, the students’ Organ Fund eventually grew to $600; a pipe organ, however, would have cost more than ten times that amount.  In April 1936, Music Department chair F. Flaxington Harker gave the first organ performance in the Chapel, playing a Hammond electronic organ borrowed from the Walter D. Moses Company in downtown Richmond.  Two years later, the University purchased a similar Hammond organ, which served for the next twenty-odd years.

(Richmond News Leader, Dec. 15, 1961)

By the late 1950s, it was clear that a new instrument was needed, and John White, chair of the Music Department, convinced University President George Modlin that it should be a real pipe organ.  After extensive research, the University selected Rudolf von Beckerath, a German organ builder not yet well known in the U.S.  In September 1961, after some two years of measuring and building, 36 crates arrived from Germany.  According to music professor Suzanne Kidd Bunting, three of Beckerath’s craftsmen spent two months assembling the new instrument in the chapel before the builder himself arrived to oversee the finishing touches.

In 1976 “the choir loft was restructured to a capacity of 80, and rich wood paneling was extended around the organ case containing the pipes.”