Nashville church to become new event space. So what do you do with the 112-year-old pipe organ?

• The 1905 George Kilgan & Son pipe organ arrived in Nashville from St. Louis in 1906.
• It's 15-feet tall, 14-feet wide and 12-feet deep. And it's worth $500,000.
• Now, it needs a new owner. It's free. But the catch? It could cost $30,000 to move.
• Want it? Contact Dan Cook at 615-512-5751.

Free to a good home: One 112-year-old pipe organ in great condition.

For nearly all of its existence, the stately instrument served as a focal point in the sanctuary of the West Nashville United Methodist Church. But Dan Cook, who bought the shuttered church earlier this year, is converting the building into an event venue and the organ isn't in the plans.

"I don’t want to be the guy that sends it to the landfill," Cook said.

► Related: Shuttered West Nashville church to become event hall

He wants to save it.

So Cook is trying to find the organ a new owner, ideally another Tennessee church, or at least a place where it can be played. While it's free, the well-maintained instrument — appraised at about $500,000 — comes with a financial catch, Cook said. The organ could cost the new owner potentially $10,000 to $30,000 or more to take it down and reassemble it someplace else, he said.

"Moving it is not an easy thing," said Dennis Milnar, founder of the Nashville-based Milnar Organ Company.

While the 1905 George Kilgen & Son pipe organ is dwarfed by others in Nashville, the instrument with its gold-painted pipes rising above a wooden console still towers at the front of the sanctuary at roughly 15-feet tall, 14-feet wide and 12-feet deep. And it's heavy.

The mechanical organ was shipped by rail from St. Louis and installed in the church in 1906, Cook said. An electric blower was later added to power the bellows. In 1969, Milnar's, then a fledgling company, restored the organ after it burned in a fire. Seeing it brought back to life delighted the congregation, Milnar said. Milnar Organ Company as well as Fine Tuning maintained the instrument in the decades that followed.

"It’s a lovely instrument. The woodworking is just fine. Everything works like a charm," Milnar said. "The organ has no real problems at all."

Organ needs a new home and quickly

The pipe organ needs a new home. And soon. Renovation of the former church, which closed last year amid dwindling membership, is already underway.

Cook, a self-described student of history who preserves historic buildings by re-purposing them, said the project will restore elements of the 1889 church's original features and play up those that survived. It will be his second church-to-boutique venue conversion.

Cook and his wife, Brenda, also own Ruby, the former Blakemore Primitive Baptist Church in Hillsboro-West End neighborhood. The new event space, Clementine, is expected to open next year.

► Related: East Nashville church site fetches 85% gain for seller

"The adaptive reuse that we have planned does not entail keeping the organ sadly, but it clearly is an important relic of Nashville and important in and of its own right," Cook said. "It’s just a mechanical work of art."

Unwanted organs a problem nationwide

Whenever a church closes, staff determine what items in the church may be able to fill a need elsewhere, said Amy Hurd, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church.

"We have re-purposed a lot of things," Hurd said. "Organs are problematic because most of our churches already have an organ and they’re difficult to move."

The story is a common one, said John Bishop, executive director of the Boston-based Organ Clearing House, which helps save high-quality pipe organs from abandonment or destruction. The clearing house currently has listings for about 450 available organs in the U.S. as well as in the United Kingdom and Germany. Finding new homes for the organs is pricey, too.

► Related: Philanthropist Cal Turner Jr. plays a mean pipe organ

"If I have 450 organs listed and I can place 20 a year, I'm doing very well," Bishop said.

The West Nashville organ is not even the only one in the city in need of new owner. LifeWay Christian Resources staff are trying to find another home for the pipe organ at its headquarters in downtown Nashville, said Carol Pipes, spokeswoman for LifeWay. The instrument is in the auditorium employees use for chapel services, and it is not making the move to LifeWay's new location, which is currently under construction, Pipes said.

So why the organ surplus?

The glut of organs up for grabs is in part a consequence of declining church membership across denominations, Bishop said. Fewer people in the pews can lead to low bank balances and church closures, he said.

"The stature of the church is different today than it was 50 years ago when I was a kid," Bishop said. "It's a shame to see something like a pipe organ, especially a good one in good condition, go without a use, but unless there's somewhere active to put it and real interest in funding it organs like that very, very frequently wind up in dumpsters."

It's also a result of a rise in a more contemporary worship style that uses guitars and drum sets instead of pipe organs, Bishop said. While the high-end pipe organ market is in great shape, the demand for small to mid-size organs has taken a big hit by the electronic organ market, he said. In the past, a small church would have been proud to own a modest pipe organ, but today they're opting to buy the less expensive electronic organ instead.

"The market for the blue collar pipe organ is gone," Bishop said. "The market for high-end pipe organs — really special, huge gorgeous organs — is very, very strong right now. In the last eight years, there have been seven very big, fancy new organs installed in New York City."

Reach Holly Meyer at hmeyer@tennessean.com or 615-259-8241 and on Twitter @HollyAMeyer. 

Take home the pipe organ

Contact Dan Cook at 615-512-5751 if you're interested in taking home the pipe organ.