Old organ promised a new life in Hannibal music venue

Published 2:01 pm Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Carrie Griffen’s transformation of the century-old Methodist church building at 901 Broadway into the Hannibal Music Academy Performance Hall has taken yet another step forward.

Since her work began on the evolution of the church-to-studio project two years ago, the time-honored structure at Ninth and Broadway has become an important midtown educational and entertainment venue.

The venue offers both vocal and instrumental lessons for young and old, as well as provides performance opportunities for local and regional musicians.

Now, Griffen’s dream has evolved even further. When she learned that the Second Baptist Church of Bowling Green had made plans to replace its building with a newer church edifice on the same town lot, her thoughts turned to the old pipe organ within the structure.

She contacted church leaders, and they agreed to give it to her, with the stipulation that she remove the organ from within the sanctuary in time for the demolition to begin.

This summer, with a deadline for the building’s demolition fast approaching, she rallied friends and family to help her disassemble the 1950s-era pipe organ and prepare it for transport to Hannibal.

And this was no easy task.

“Mostly family,” Carrie said, stepped forward to help. “It was like my sisters and their husbands, my daughter and her fiancé; about 15 people. Some were adult students, and some of the church people helped to get it out.”

The organ pieces — maybe 1,000 in all — were labeled and prepared for transport to Hannibal.

The next challenge will be to put it back together within the Hannibal Music Academy Performance Hall.

Organ history

The Hannibal church building, constructed in 1907, originally had a pipe organ.

“It was where the choir loft is now,” Carrie said. “There are pictures of the old pipe organ. The pipes went all the way across the sanctuary. So there is already space for the pipe organ to fit. We’ll have to take out the choir loft.

“A pastor at Louisiana, Missouri, will come and take the choir loft out,” she said. Once that task is complete, the process of reassembling the pipe organ will begin.

Carrie remembers that the old pipe organ in the Hannibal church was replaced in the 1970s with an electric pipe organ. “They bought an electric organ,” she remembers, but she has not been able to ascertain any more details about the original organ.

“I’ve asked as many people as I could, nobody knows the history. It would have been before I was born.”

Dreams for the future

The addition of this pipe organ to the Hannibal Music Academy Performance Hall is, in actuality, a continuation of Carrie’s personal dream.

Carrie is a lifelong musician, studying in her youth under Pat Perkins and Dorothy McElroy.

She holds a master’s degree in music education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and taught music in various public schools for 14 years, to an estimated 10,000 students. In addition, she taught private voice and piano lessons for 25 years, and she directed the Lincoln County Community Choir in the early 2000s, as well as handbell choirs.

Now, it is her dream to play “Phantom of the Opera” on this organ in this music hall.

As she looks over the unassembled parts of the organ now occupying space in Hannibal, she knows there is a big task at hand.

“Putting it back together… a lot of those people (who helped disassemble the organ) are expecting me to tell them what to do.”

Will her dream of reassembling this organ into the former church sanctuary come to fruition?

“I think it will happen,” she said.

Mary Lou Montgomery, Suburban Newspapers of America Editor of the Year, Dailies, 2010, retired as editor of the Hannibal, Mo., Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on amazon.com by this author include: “The Notorious Madam Shaw,” “Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’” “Oakwood: West of Hannibal,” “St. Mary’s Avenue District,” and “Live, on stage in Hannibal 1879: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore.’” Montgomery can be reached at montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com