How to Use the OHS Pipe Organ Database

Open the Instruments search. It offers typed fields for Location (church or institution), City, State/Province Code, Country Code, Builder, Opus and Year, and results update as you type; there is no Search button to press. The site’s own advice is that less text works better: leave “Saint” or “St.” off a location name and use the main word of a multi-word city (“Vernon” rather than “Mount Vernon”). So enter one distinctive word from the church’s name and the city, and let the list narrow.

None of the search filters is applied until you tick it. The checkboxes are Search For Only the Original Instrument, Show Only Currently Extant Instruments, and Entry Has Image(s), Stoplist(s), Document(s) or Webpage(s). Because the extant filter is opt-in, an unfiltered search returns records for organs the database does not record as extant, which means a record for an earlier instrument in the same building can appear next to the current one. That is useful rather than a nuisance: it is the quickest way to learn that your building has more than one entry.

Results can be viewed as cards, a table or a map. The table view lists ID, Instrument, Location, Address, Ranks, Manuals, Pipes and Resources. The number in the ID column is the record’s database ID, and it is the number you will need when you cite the record. The search itself is written into the page address, so you can bookmark a search and run it again later.

The Locations search takes a venue name, city, state or province and country, plus a category (Church, School, Public Location, Private Location or Other). A location record then lists every instrument the database holds for that venue as builder plus year, each linking to its instrument record. If the Instruments search returns several similar hits, or none, the location record is the fastest way to see everything the database associates with your building.

A builder name is a weaker starting point than a location. Free text in the Builder field matches every builder entity whose name contains that text, not only the company you mean, and many firms are filed under more than one trading name. If a builder search returns more entities than you expected, or the company you know changed names or merged, see the guide to searching successor names and merged companies in organ databases.

The Opus field takes the builder’s own sequential number. Where a company numbered its instruments consistently, an opus number paired with the builder name narrows a search at once: Reuter, for example, numbered from Opus 1 in 1917, and the same numbers are used by the company, by The Diapason, by the database and by owning institutions. Where a builder’s numbering is inconsistent or carries prefixes, treat the number as a lead rather than a key.

Every instrument record lives at a stable address of the form pipeorgandatabase.org/instruments/ followed by its numeric ID. The header is laid out in a fixed order: an optional work-relationship label; the builder name; “Opus [number], [year]” or a bare year; an optional “Originally [builder] (Opus [number], [year])” line; the venue name; a room or position line; the street address; city, state and country; and a size line combining ranks, pipes and divisions. Below the header sit Images, Stoplists and Consoles sections and a tab group of Details, Notes, Documents, Audio and Blowers, each tab showing its own item count.

The builder named at the top of a record is not necessarily the original builder. The headline name may identify later work, an owner, or an unknown-builder placeholder, and where the database has an original attribution it sits on the subordinate Originally line. A record for Peragallo Opus 772 (2022), for instance, is headed “Peragallo Pipe Organ Co.” with “Originally Reuter Organ Co. (Opus 1368, 1962)” beneath it: the 2022 work is Peragallo’s, the organ began as a 1962 Reuter. Read both lines before you tell anyone who built your organ.

An organ that has been rebuilt may have several linked instrument records describing different revisions, each with its own numeric ID. The database links them with a header block reading “This instrument has multiple revisions:” and controls labeled “VIEW OLDER ([year]) REVISION” and “VIEW NEWER ([year]) REVISION”, plus a “Related Instrument Entries” list in the notes area. Follow the whole chain before deciding which record describes the organ as it stands, since different revision records can carry different specifications.

A well-populated record may carry a status sentence, dated and attributed notes, webpage links, an OHS convention line, a stoplist that names its source, and hosted documents that can include factory paper such as an original specification sheet. The public fields include no structured entry for wind pressure, windchest type, tuning pitch or temperament, and no flag for restored, modified, relocated, rebuilt or additions; that information, if present at all, is in the notes, stoplist or documents. A record also does not by itself establish that the instrument still exists, is playable, or matches the stoplist shown. For a fuller account of how much weight to give the headline name, the Originally line, the revision chain and the builder holdings figure, see how much a Pipe Organ Database record proves about attribution, coverage and currency.

Cite a record by three things: its numeric URL, the date you read it, and whether it was marked Pending Review. The date matters because the interface displays no creation date, no modification date and no change history. The dated, attributed note entries are the only visible provenance trail, and they cover what contributors added, not what was changed. Every instrument record and builder entity also carries public controls (Add Note, Add Webpage, Add Image, Add Document, Add Stoplist, Add Console, Add Cross Reference, and Suggest an Edit), so what you read on one date may differ from what the next reader sees.

Use this citation template, replacing the bracketed placeholders: Pipe Organ Database, Organ Historical Society, [record URL], accessed [date], review status [as shown]. Keep a printout or PDF of the record alongside it.

The Pipe Organ Database is a project of the Organ Historical Society. Its About page describes a project first started in the 1950s to record extant historic tracker organs, which has since existed in many formats; the current relational database was established in 2004 and is maintained by a Database Committee that reviews public submissions. The About page calls it “the definitive compilation of information about pipe organs in North America”, and the Related page adds that it accepts information about instruments across the globe and points readers to other national and regional organ databases for other continents. In early September 2026 its landing page counted roughly 75,000 instrument records, 8,500 builders and 30,000 stoplists; those counters move daily.

The database depends on continuing voluntary contribution, and its About page quotes its original developer that its potential “will be realized, however, only with the continued participation and contribution of organ scholars on a widespread basis”. Coverage of any one builder’s output is not stated anywhere on the site, so a builder entity’s list of instruments should be read as what has been contributed, not as a complete works list.