Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC) has been awarded a Save America’s Treasures Collection Grant from the National Park Service (NPS) to restore the theater’s historic Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
The grant will provide $650,000, which covers approximately half of the project’s cost. PPAC is one of only six organizations in New England and the sole recipient in Rhode Island to receive funding from the NPS this year.
“Our Mighty Wurlitzer is a significant part of PPAC history and an important piece in music history as well,” said Alan J. Chille, PPAC’s general manager. “Since 1982, we have offered free Wurlitzer concerts for the community. In the past couple of years, we have expanded our concert offerings so that more community members are on the PPAC stage.”
The Mighty Wurlitzer, a 5-manual, 21-Rank pipe organ built by The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in 1927, is an extremely rare musical instrument. Only three of these pipe organ consoles were built by the Wurlitzer Company.
The organ was purchased by PPAC in 1982 from a private owner with the help of then-House Organist Lincoln W.N. Pratt and a small team of PPAC Trustees. It has been a treasured part of the theater ever since.
Since 2020, Peter Krasinski has been PPAC’s House Organist, accompanying silent films and renowned as an organist.
This year, the NPS is awarding $25.7 million in Save America’s Treasures grants to preserve 59 nationally significant sites and historic collections in 26 states and D.C. Almost $50 million in private and public investment will match the $25.7 million award.
NPS partners with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services to award the grants.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) assisted a What’sUpNewp journalist with the reporting included in this story.