Situated in the space between Anderson Hall and the Memorial Chapel, Watchorn Hall is home to the University of Redlands Conservatory of Music.
Watchorn Hall’s dedication ceremony was held June 8th, 1952, and named in honor of Mr. Robert Watchorn, who resided in Redlands and made a large donation to the university’s building fund. Today, the building is home to many of the faculty offices for the music department. Overlooking the Quad, these offices line a hallway often filled with the sounds of music.
It is also home to several large keyboard instruments such as pianos, harpsichords, clavichords, and most notably, three pipe organs. The largest one resides in the Chapel and is used during events such as the annual Feast of Lights, while another sits inside Watchorn Hall’s Fred Lowe Performance Hall.
And in this building, down a one small hallway, is an office that sometimes gets a bit overlooked. Once a storage room, this office is now home to the Conservatory’s professor of organ studies, Dr. Phillip Hoch, and a special instrument, a George Stevens Opus 1 pipe organ, built by a former student at the university over fifty years ago.
George Stevens was an organ manufacturer from the 1800s, based in the New England area. According to the Organ Historical Society’s database, this particular organ, nestled along one wall in the office, is one of only a handful of its kind that still work today. Other working models can be found in various churches across the country.
The organ itself was first brought to the university in 1963, under the direction of then-senior composition major Steuart Goodwin, who spent the next several months reassembling the instrument like an extremely large 3D puzzle. Today, it fits snugly between the walls of Watchorn Hall room 209, though the pipes have been adjusted to account for the room’s height. Were one to look from afar, it would not be evident that every piece of the organ had once been separated from the others and delivered via a multitude of boxes in the mail.
“It’s a very workable pipe organ, great for teaching and for playing some small chamber music and solo works, things like that,” Hoch said. “So it’s a great way for students to see the instrument and how it works, and also just by how close it is to the person. Because other instruments, they’re the size of the building- the Chapel organ, for example. That’s a very big instrument that takes up lots of space that we don’t really see. That’s a more intimidating instrument, whereas this one is a lot more cozy and quaint; makes it easy to understand for those that want to learn the organ.”
The Chapel organ, a Cassavant Frères Organ Opus 1230, is a large instrument that was installed in 1927 with over 4,000 pipes and was the largest of its kind in California at the time of its installment. When played, it can be heard from across the Quad due to its sheer size. It’s used in events and performances, such as Convocation or the Feast of Lights.
These amazing instruments are long-standing fixtures of the university, and though often unnoticed by the majority of the student body, certainly have much more of their story than initially meets the eye.
Information taken from the university website, university library, the Organ Historical Society’s database, and via interview with Dr. Phillip Hoch. Special thanks to Michele Nielson for information from the university archives.
Photos taken by Kae Yeoh
Kae Yeoh is a junior majoring in music performance and is a senior reporter for the Redlands Bulldog. When not busy, Kae enjoys writing, making Spotify playlists, and watching documentaries.
