E. and G.G. Hook Organ

E. and G.G. Hook was a pipe organ designing and manufacturing company, located in Boston, Massachusetts, which operated from 1827 to 1935. It was started, and originally run, by brothers Elias and George Greenleaf Hook.

The Hook brothers were sons of a cabinet maker in Salem, Massachusetts where they apprenticed with the organ builder William Goodrich. They moved to Boston in 1832 and began producing larger organs. In 1845 they produced their first concert hall organ in the Tremont Temple in Boston which later burned.

When the Hook brothers were getting ready to retire, in 1871, Frank Hastings joined the firm, at which point the name was changed to E. and G.G. Hook & Hastings. When the Hook brothers retired (in 1881), the name was shortened to Hook and Hastings. In its day, Hook was the premier organ building company in the United States.

The Hook firm built over 2,000 pipe organs, many of which are still extant today. Some remain in unaltered, original condition, such as the three-manual instrument at First Unitarian Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts; others have been tonally and/or physically altered due to changing trends in the organ world during the 20th century.

The largest extant organ built by the firm is their opus 801 built in 1875 for the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, Massachusetts. This instrument comprises 101 ranks over 3 manuals and pedal. Among the more notable features of this instrument are likely a result of having to fill such a large space; namely the use of imported reeds from Zimmerman of Paris, bold mixtures, cornets and a Tuba Mirabilis made in the Hook factory. This instrument exists in a mechanically altered state having been electrified, however; it largely remains tonally original.

The 1880s also saw the establishment of the Hook & Hastings organ factory, by far the largest of the Weston’s mills and industries. The owner, Francis Henry Hastings (1836–1916) was born at 199 North Avenue and educated at the nearby District School #4 in Weston. His formal education ended at age 14, when he left Weston to apprentice at a Boston machine shop. At age 19, he joined the firm of E. & G.G. Hook, makers of some of the century’s greatest church and concert hall organs. Some three decades later, after the death of the Hook brothers, Hastings became head of the prestigious firm. He decided to relocate the factory from Roxbury Crossing to the farm fields across from his boyhood home. Because the Weston, MA had no zoning regulations, nothing prevented construction of a factory in this rural setting, nor did local residents seem to object. The huge wooden building, 280 feet long and three to four stories high, stood on Viles Street just north of the railroad tracks. It was visible from great distances in the deforested landscape. Proximity to the rail line made it easy to bring in supplies and ship the finished organs throughout the United States.

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