Photo of Vicki Bock (colloquially known as the Organ Grinder’s “Monkey Lady”) with two good friends.
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Organ Grinder Architectural Drawings & Blueprints Found
The Organ Grinder Documentary Project has recently obtained blueprints and architectural drawings of the Organ Grinder restaurants from various sources. For the first time ever, you can directly compare the scale of the later, larger Denver location to the first one in Portland. The original architect was Will Martin of Martin-Soderstrom-Matteson Architects. (Now Soderstrom Architects.)…
- Midwest | Neat Stuff | Project Updates | Road Trips | Videos
Toby Washburn’s Impromptu Performance on the Carma Labs Organ
On April 8, Toby Washburn stopped by Carma Labs in Franklin, Wisconsin to demonstrate the unusual pipe organ constructed in the warehouse. As part of our Midwest Tour, The Organ Grinder Documentary project visited Carma Labs (which you may recognize as the manufacturers of Carmex lip balm) to explore the wild and over-the-top things people…
Auction at Portland’s Paramount Theatre, March, 1975.
When the Paramount Theatre in Portland, Oregon closed, before eventually becoming the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, many items were auctioned off, including furnishings, lighting fixtures, props, and the mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ that had originally been installed in the theatre for its grand opening on March 8, 1928. A representative of the company that owned…
“The Calm Before the Storm”
Yesterday, we returned to the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon. The AHC had just unearthed a set of slides from the architecture firm Martin, Soderstrom and Matteson (now Soderstrom Architects), originally co-founded by Will Martin, the architect who designed the Organ Grinder building. The slides feature the Organ Grinder building in 1973 around the…
Dress for the Occasion
Mascots at the Organ Grinder restaurant in Portland, Oregon, dressed in red-white-and-blue garb for the 1976 United States Bicentennial celebration.
The Washington Post March at the Organ Grinder
Happy Fourth of July! In this newly-acquired footage from the 1970s, organist Jonas Nordwall performs John Philip Sousa’s “Washington Post” March at the Organ Grinder restaurant in Portland, Oregon. The Organ Grinder’s performers would work various bits into each 45-50min set, including interacting with the mechanical monkey. The organist would play along as the monkey…
