At this time, the divided choir was eliminated in favor of its current composition of two rows and one riser. Under the direction of Harold Wagoner, the chancel was extended eight feet into the nave to accomodate a reorganization of the pulpit, font, communion table and retable.

Room remains in the belfry for additional bells.Ī committee was formed in 1982 to consider the reconfiguration of the chancel in anticipation of the installation of the present organ. It sounds “B” above middle “C,” is 31 1/2 inches in diameter, 25 1/2 inches high and weighs 704 pounds. The bell in the church tower was cast in 1974 by the Royal Bellfoundry Petit & Fritsen of Aarle-Rixtel, Holland, bellfounders since 1660. Although a large organ chamber at the rear of the chancel stood ready to receive a substantial pipe organ, a Hammond RT-2 organ (the “concert” model) served for twenty years until the present organ was installed. Its chancel was originally designed and built in the then-typical divided choir arrangement. (Wagoner would write in 1982 that “…in many ways your interior is the best, or at least one of the very best, of the many colonial churches we have designed.”) The commodious and gracious sanctuary, seating 650, is lit by tall, clear-glazed windows in the nave aisles. Wagoner, it is built in a refined and innovative neo-Georgian vernacular that bears Wagoner’s unmistakable imprint. Envisioned and designed by Philadelphia architect Harold E. The congregation’s third sanctuary was dedicated on November 18, 1962. Cracked from its fall during the fire, it is all that remains of the second church. The church bell, cast in 1858 by the Meneely Bell Foundry of West Troy, New York, stands near the present portico. As a result, the organ’s specification and other details are lost. On Ash Wednesday, 1958, this building and organ were consumed by fire, as were most of the church’s historical records. 1695, spoke into the sanctuary’s divided chancel through two identical cases. (Upjohn was the grandson of Richard Upjohn, co-founder of the American Institute of Architects and architect of Trinity Church Wall Street, Grace Church Brooklyn Heights and many other notable buildings throughout the Northeast.) 1920 also saw the installation of a new organ, built by the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont.

After nearly eighty years of service, this building was replaced by a second edifice dedicated in 1920 and designed by Hobart Upjohn, a noted and prolific architect in North Carolina and beyond. It is unknown if that sanctuary ever contained an organ. The Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill was organized in 1829, and built its first sanctuary, located on the church’s present site, in the 1840s. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoiceĪ BRIEF HISTORY OF UNIVERSITY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AND ITS ORGANS

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