Identifying Wurlitzer Organs by Opus, Style, and Blower Number

An opus number is the serial number of the instrument, in the definition used by the Garden State Theatre Organ Society’s glossary of theatre-organ terms, and it is the identifier that everything else about a Wurlitzer hangs on. A style tells you which model was shipped; an opus number tells you which instrument. The glossary is an association’s working vocabulary rather than a factory document, but its four definitions of opus, style, blower number and wiring schedule are the ones this page follows.

In practice an opus number appears paired with a size figure. Registry, convention and custodian pages current as of 2 September 2026 identify Opus 1783 as a 4/32, Opus 1953 as a 4/34, Opus 1206 as a 4/28, Opus 1836 as a ‘three manual special’ in its museum custodian’s wording, and Opus 1587 as a five-manual, 21-rank instrument. The size figures in these pairings describe the instruments as now reported rather than as shipped: a present-day rank count cannot be read back onto a factory record without checking the factory shipment list.

In a database record the opus number is part of the record’s title, paired with the builder name, a year and a location. Indexed record titles from the Organ Historical Society’s Pipe Organ Database take the form ‘The Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. – Opus 2000, 1928 | Mastbaum Theatre – Philadelphia, PA, US’ and ‘The Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. (Opus 309, 1935) WMAQ Radio’. An indexed title of that kind, current as of 2 September 2026, is evidence that a record exists and how it is keyed; the record body itself did not display when the database was read on that date, and a title alone establishes no stoplist, field set or revision date.

The ATOS National Registry of Significant Theatre Organs uses the opus number as one of two accepted anchors: its criteria require that a registered instrument be ‘identifiable by either builder’s opus number or original installation location’, and the same criteria admit instruments ‘assembled from components’ that represent a significant advancement of the art. Those criteria apply to theatre organs of every builder, not only Wurlitzer, and they are an association program’s rules as of 2 September 2026 rather than a factory practice. An instrument assembled from components sits at the edge of that identification rule: what such an instrument is made of has to be established from its documentary record, not from its identifiers.

A Wurlitzer style number designates a model. In the association glossary, style is ‘Wurlitzer terminology referring to the Model of the instrument’, and in Gordon Kibbee’s account in Theatre Organ, the journal of the American Theatre Organ Society, the factory used style numbers to designate ‘various sizes and models of instruments shipped through the years’, with ‘some 68 different numbers (or letters) used to designate standard models or those with only slight deviations from standard’. That is a different job from the opus number’s: instruments of one style share a model, each has its own opus number, and only the opus number tells them apart.

The widely used style table comes from Kibbee’s listing, and he stated his method plainly: his sources were ‘a set of stop lists inherited from the dusty files of a local Wurlitzer sales representative’ and ‘conversations with several men who worked on original Wurlitzer installations’. The table therefore derives partly from a sales representative’s private trade files and from oral testimony, not from a single surviving factory catalog, and it is secondary enthusiast-journal scholarship rather than a factory document.

Kibbee’s listing ties each style to the factory shipment list, giving a rank count and a shipment total for each. Style D is a six-rank model he describes as the smallest regular model to include a Tibia Clausa, with ‘A total of 201 were shipped’, and Style 185 is a seven-rank model he describes as the largest regular model with no Tibia Clausa, with 26 shipped. Style 285 is a 32-rank model of which ‘According to the factory shipping list there were four organs of this model’. Those figures are quoted from a digitized scan of the article in which several shipment numbers are garbled, so any individual number should be checked against the printed page.

Kibbee also warned that theatre-organ enthusiasts ‘are somewhat prone, on occasion, to become a little vague about the meanings and indiscriminate in the application’ of style numbers, and urged use of the factory’s interpretation of them. That is one identified specialist’s judgment, published in the association journal, and it is the reason a style reported on a society page or in venue publicity is a report to be checked rather than a fact to be copied.

A style designation need not be a number. Alongside the numbered series, society and journal sources record lettered styles B, D, E, F and H, a ‘Balaban’ style and a ‘Publix’ designation, so a Wurlitzer style may be reported as a letter, a number or a marketing name. That list is assembled from three secondary sources rather than from a factory catalog, and the exact scope of the named series is not established.

Instruments that departed substantially from a standard model, or for which a stock console shell could not be used, carried no style number at all. Kibbee states that such instruments were ‘usually labeled (for example): special, 3 man, 4 man, or 4 man special’. A label of that kind is a style designation in the same sense as a number, and it signals that the instrument is not one the standard model tables describe.

Three named styles show the forms a reader will meet. The ATOS Theatre Organ Locator entry for the Alabama Theatre records Opus 1783, a 4/32, with the designation ‘Style Publix 1’, and states that the theatre organist Jesse Crawford laid out the design for use in deluxe venues for Publix Theatres; the attribution is repeated by the society, not shown from a factory document, and the entry carries no installation date, operational status or verification date.

The Garden State Theatre Organ Society documents Opus 2185, shipped in March 1934 to the Rainbow Room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, as Style ‘R16’, a ‘residence style’ it describes as derived from the two-manual, nine-rank R-14 residence style with a third manual and one additional rank, and it states that only two R-16 units were built. The R-14 relationship and the two-unit total are the society’s own statements, not checked against a factory shipment count.

Opus 1894, installed in 1928 at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, is identified as Style ‘Fox Special’ in a reproduced 1995 enthusiast mailing-list post that describes a four-manual instrument of more than thirty ranks across four chambers with a secondary console and percussion, powered by two 50 hp Spencer Orgoblo blowers, one kept as a spare. A reproduced hobbyist post is not a factory document, and it identifies the blowers by make, horsepower and quantity rather than by serial number, so it is a partial identification record; it says nothing about the instrument’s present state.

A style designation records the model as shipped, not the instrument as it stands today. The ATOS Theatre Organ Locator entry for the Fargo Theatre states that its instrument ‘began its life as a 2/7 Style “E X” Wurlitzer (opus 1255)’ installed in February or March 1926, while the Red River Theatre Organ Society states that the same instrument is ‘currently 4 manuals and 27 ranks’. Both statements stood as of 2 September 2026 on society pages that are undated at entry level, and a present rank count is volatile; for identification the point is that Style E X describes a seven-rank instrument of 1926 and says nothing about the 27 ranks now reported under that opus number.

The same instrument also shows that a reported style can differ between the two societies closest to it: the Locator gives Style ‘E X’ while the Red River Theatre Organ Society’s history calls it ‘the 1926 Style E 2/7 Wurlitzer’. Neither page cites the factory shipment list for its designation, and one instrument does not establish how often such disagreements occur; it establishes that a style on a society page is a report, not a factory record.

A size figure attached to an opus number can likewise describe a later state rather than the shipment. A single preservation-society page gives the size of Opus 1914 both as a ‘3/11’ and, elsewhere on the same page, as a ‘3/10’. Which figure is correct is not settled there, and it does not need to be for the identifier point: neither 3/11 nor 3/10 is a factory-shipped specification.

Style designations remain in live use, attached to specific opus numbers, in current venue and society descriptions: the Locator entry for the Alabama Theatre gives Opus 1783 as ‘Style Publix 1’, and a 2025 news account of the Mount Baker Theatre’s Opus 1558 of 1927 describes it as a ‘Style 215’. Both are third-party descriptions rather than factory documents. A style designation is therefore evidence of what a society, a venue or a journalist reports the model to have been, at the level of the source that reports it, and it is not evidence that the instrument’s current specification is unaltered.

A figure written as manuals over ranks is a size, not a model and not an identity. In the Garden State Theatre Organ Society’s glossary, ‘a 3 keyboard Wurlitzer brand organ with 16 sets of pipes would be called a “3/16 Wurlitzer”‘: the first figure counts keyboards and the second counts ranks. The notation is generic to theatre organs of every builder and is not proprietary to Wurlitzer, so it identifies neither a builder, nor a model, nor an instrument. It sits beside a style designation without replacing it: in a registry line such as ‘Style 240, Opus 1746; 3/13 Wurlitzer’, Style 240 is the model and 3/13 is the size, and the two answer different questions.

Because the figure describes the instrument as reported, it changes over the instrument’s life, which is why one opus number can carry a 2/8 at shipment and a 3/10 or 3/11 in a later description. Treat it as a present-day measurement dated to the page that reports it.

A blower number is the serial number of the blower, the electric air turbine that powers the instrument, in the association glossary’s definition, and a wiring schedule is ‘Wurlitzer terminology referring to the wiring configuration of the instrument’. Both attach to something other than the instrument’s identity. The blower number identifies one component, and a theatre-organ society account states that the Spencer Turbine Company built more than 37,000 organ blowers from 1905 with Wurlitzer as its largest customer, which is a reminder that the number on a blower plate belongs to the blower and its maker, not to the organ’s opus series. A blower number cannot stand in for an opus number.

The wiring schedule survives as a documented field rather than as an explanation. The volunteer-compiled database at barton.theatreorgans.com carries a Wurlitzer-specific field spelled ‘Wire Schedule’ alongside STYLE and Blower Serial number, so the term still appears in records a reader will meet. What the wiring and switching actually do when the instrument is played is a mechanism question, answered on Wurlitzer Unit-Organ Mechanisms and Playing Controls.

As of 2 September 2026, no published register, index or lookup service for organ blower serial numbers of any make, Spencer Orgoblo or other, is known, and none of the society, venue, museum or archival sources cited on this page records a blower number for any instrument. That is a documented negative, not proof that no such record series survives: blower records may exist in manufacturer archives or in private hands. The blower number is therefore a real identifier with no demonstrated corroborating record series behind it, and nothing here supports telling an owner that a blower number cannot be traced.

What does exist is compiled indexing. The Searchable Online Database of Theatre Organ Original Installations at barton.theatreorgans.com, a volunteer compilation covering several theatre-organ builders, records blower serial numbers and horsepower for many theatre installations in its Blower Serial number field and states the working rule that serial numbers beginning with letters are generally Kinetic blowers while all-numeric serials are generally Spencer. That rule is the compiler’s generality, not corroborated by a manufacturer source. Matching a number found on a blower plate against that database is a comparison against a compilation, not against a primary record, and should be recorded as such.

A registry entry pairs the identifiers on this page in one line, and reading it well means knowing which field is which. An ATOS National Registry entry pairs the style designation with the opus number and the original venue, in the form ‘#70 – Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver BC, Style 240, Opus 1746; 3/13 Wurlitzer, Level 1’, an entry dated 2017; what a registry’s coverage supports is taken up on the records page. In that line Opus 1746 is the identity, Style 240 is the model as shipped, 3/13 is the size as reported, and the venue is the original installation.

An ATOS Theatre Organ Locator entry carries more fields: builder, opus number or numbers, style designation, size as manuals over ranks, venue, street address, telephone, venue website and a narrative history. That is the field set of one entry, the Fargo Theatre’s, and other entries may vary.

What such an entry supports is the pairing itself: that a society associates this opus number with this style, this size and this venue, as of a date the entry may not state. The opus number is the part to carry forward into any record search. The style is the society’s report of the model and may differ from another society’s report of the same instrument. The size is present-day and changes. Where the shipment record for an opus is searched, how far a registry’s coverage and dating can be relied on, and how present location and condition are established, are the questions answered on Finding Wurlitzer Records and Documenting Relocation or Restoration.

Once the opus number is settled, it is the figure an owner or custodian quotes to an archive, a society or the firm that works on the instrument.