Plate 41.—The Tabernacle—Interior
A gallery thirty-six feet wide extends around the interior of the Tabernacle except at the west end, where the gallery gives place to the great organ and a terraced platform providing accommodations for Church officials and the choir. In the choir space, seats are provided for three hundred singers, with other seats for nearly as many more in the adjacent sections of the spacious gallery. The building, as a whole, affords searing room for nearly nine thousands persons, but audiences much larger than this have assembled on many occasions. The acoustic properties of the building are surprisingly good.
The great organ occupies nearly a thousand square feet of floor space, and towers to a height of forty-eight feet. The instrument is, in reality, a combination of five individual organs,—Solo, Swell, Great, Choir, and Pedal organs. To operate the bellows an electric motor of ten horse-power is employed and the air capacity is about five thousand cubic feet per minute. The instrument comprises one hundred and ten stops, and over thirty-six hundred pipes. The pipes range from a fraction of an inch to thirty-two feet in speaking length. This splendid instrument, which at the time of its construction was the largest organ in the country, is the product of local talent and all its wood-parts are of native material. The organ as it stands represents a cost of over one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
See pages 204, 205
323
