George S Hutchings

George S. Hutchings Biographical Notes

Contributed by Benjamin Dunham

George S. Hutchings was born in 1835 in Salem, Massachusetts. He learned the organ manufacturing business with the Boston firm of E. and G. G. Hook of Boston (later Hook & Hastings) and founded the Hutchings, Plaisted and Company with colleague Mark Plaisted in 1872.

In 1883, with the support of patroness Elizabeth Taber, Hutchings designed and built a two-manual mechanical-action organ for our church (Op. 131) to replace a small chamber organ in the balcony. When Plaisted left the company in 1884, the new organ became possibly the first organ Hutchings installed under his own name. It was rebuilt with alterations by the Andover Organ Company in 1967 and currently has 15 stops and 18 ranks of pipes.

Hutchings became prominent among American organ builders and built organs for the old Boston Music Hall, the Old South Church, Trinity Church, Church of the Advent, Symphony Hall, and St. Bartholomew’s in New York (the organ played by Leopold Stokowski). His organs were installed at Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Wellesley, Williams, and Wesleyan colleges, and the New England Conservatory of Music.