Ortloff Organ Company, LLC, Needham, Massachusetts, has built a new organ for Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Ortloff Opus 4 comprises 12 stops, 14 ranks, 819 pipes on two manuals and pedal.
Surrounded by the campus of Williams College in the Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts, Saint John’s fieldstone building is at one with its bucolic setting. Built in 1896, the church is of modest size, but with exquisite adornments: angel-headed winged hammer beams, a carved reredos with mosaics depicting Jesus and Mary, and a stunning collection of stained glass from the studios of Tiffany, La Farge, and Connick.
The space given for the organ is a chamber roughly six by eight feet on one side of the apsidal chancel, once housing Skinner’s six-stop Opus 792 of 1929. In 1965 M. P. Möller rebuilt the organ, adding an unenclosed Great in a cantilevered flower box.
The Great chorus is made of a high-lead alloy. The Swell mostly reuses pipework from the church’s previous instruments, carefully chosen to serve specific tonal needs. The one new stop in the Swell, the 8′ Lieblich Gedeckt, is modeled after those of English builder Thomas Lewis, using measurements from his 1895 four-manual organ at Albion Church in Ashton-under-Lyne on the east side of Manchester, England.
The organ is featured on the cover of the June issue of The Diapason:
https://www.thediapason.com/content/june-2025
https://www.thediapason.com/content/cover-feature-ortloff-organ-company-opus-4
Builder’s website: ortlofforgan.com
Church’s website: stjohnswilliamstown.orghttps://stjohnswilliamstown.org/
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