Click on image to enlarge. Puritan Church (Congregational) Lafayette Avenue, corner Marcy Avenue Brooklyn, N.Y. 11216 Organ Specifications: Lafayette Avenue, corner Marcy Avenue (1870-?) • II/ Reuben Midmer & Sons (<1917) ► II/24 Edwin L. Holbrook (1871) DeKalb Avenue and Walworth Street (1864-1870) • unknown The Puritan Church began in December 1863, when a few of the teachers of the Wallabout Presbyterian Church decided to form a new school that might become the nucleus of a church. A store at No. 712 Myrtyle Avenue was rented for one year, beginning in January 1864, and soon the sabbath school had grown in numbers. On March 28, 1864, it was resolved to organize a Congregational church, to be known as The East Brooklyn Congregational Church, and on July 17th the church was officially founded. In October, a plot of land at the corner of DeKalb Avenue and Walworth Street was leased for ten years, and a church building was erected at a cost of $4,000. On June 27, 1865, the society adopted the name of "Puritan Church". On July 18, 1869, the society laid the cornerstone of a new building at Lafayette and Marcy Avenues. E.T. Potter designed the new church, which measured one hundred and seventy feet by ninety-five feet, including the main auditorium, lecture room, sabbath school room, parlors, pastor's study room, etc. The exterior was of brownstone and Ohio light stone, and cost $40,000.             Reuben Midmer & Sons Brooklyn, N.Y. (<1917) 2 manuals Sometime before 1917, the Reuben Midmer & Sons Company installed a new organ, or perhaps modified the existing Holbrook organ. Specifications of this organ have not yet been located.             Edwin L. Holbrook East Medway, Mass. (1871) Mechanical action 2 manuals, 23 stops, 24 ranks This organ, built in 1871 by E. L. Holbrook, was said to have a case designed after the one in Wells Cathedral in England.                 Great Organ (Manual I) – 58 notes 16   Tenoroon Diapason [TC] 46 4   Wald Flute [TC] 46 8   Open Diapason 58 4   Octave 58 8   German Gamba 58 2   Super Octave 58 8   Dulciana [TC] 46   Sesquialtera, 3 ranks 174 8   Clarabella [TC] 46 8   Trumpet 58 8   Stopped Diapason Bass 12 8   Clarionett [TC] 46             Swell Organ (Manual II) – 58 notes, enclosed 16   Bourdon Bass 12 4   Principal 58 16   Bourdon Treble [TC] 46   Mixture, 2 ranks 116 8   Open Diapason 58 8   Bassoon Bass 12 8   Salicional 58 8   Hautboy [TC] 46 8   Stopped Diapason 58   Tremulant 4   Flute Harmonique [TC] 46                   Pedal Organ – 27 notes 16   Sub Bass [large scale] 27         16   Violoncello Bass 27                       Couplers     Swell to Great               Swell to Pedal               Great to Pedal                           Composition Pedals 1.   Bring on all Great stops 2.   Take off all stops but the Great Diapason                 Mechanical Accessories     Tremulant               Pedal Check         Engine                       Sources:      "Hopelessly in Debt," The New York Times, February 21, 1877.      Nelson, George. Organs in the United States and Canada Database. Seattle, Wash.      Owen, Barbara. The Organ in New England: An Account of Its Use and Manufacture to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Raleigh: The Sunbury Press, 1979. Specifications of Edwin L. Holbrook Organ (1871).      "Puritan Church, Brooklyn," The New York Times, October 4, 1868.      Stiles, Henry Reed. History of the City of Brooklyn: Including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburgh. Brooklyn: pub. by subscription, 1863.      Webber, F.R. "Organ scrapbook" at Organ Historical Society Archives, Princeton, N.J. Specifications of Edwin L. Holbrook Organ (1871). Courtesy Jonathan Bowen. Photos:      Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection: exterior (1906).             | NYC AGO Home Page | Back to NYC Organ Project List |