Together with Wichita State

Are your kids (or grandkids, nieces / nephews, friends’ kids, etc) in the Class of 2027? Wichita State has some serious scholarship money up for grabs, including awards worth up to $80,000.

A few of the biggest:

• 🎓 Richard D. Smith Scholarship: $80,000

• 🎓 Harry Gore Memorial Scholarships: Three awards of $80,000 each

• 💼 Ross Tidemann Scholarship: $50,000 for business majors

• 🎨 James Scholarship: $40,000 for Fine Arts or Liberal Arts & Sciences majors

And those are just a few. WSU has added and increased several scholarships this year, with opportunities for all kinds of majors.

Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8.

See more of the scholarships up for grabs

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The Wichita Wurlitzer

I was at Century II a couple of months ago for the Rhea Lana’s Consignment Sale (great sale btw if you’ve never been).

While there, I noticed a massive white-and-gold piano-looking thing with a bunch of switches, pedals, the works. A couple of gentlemen were fixing it or tweaking it, not really sure.

If you’ve been in the Exhibition Hall, you’ve probably seen it.

Turns out, it's not a piano. It's a Wurlitzer theatre organ.

And not just any Wurlitzer. This thing is nearly 100 years old and came all the way from Times Square in New York City.

What you see sitting in Exhibition Hall is really just the control center. Hidden behind the walls are thousands of pipes, percussion instruments and enough equipment that the entire instrument weighs tens of thousands of pounds.

And the story of how it ended up in Wichita is pretty incredible.

The Wichita Wurlitzer Turns 100

On November 19, 1926, the Wurlitzer made its debut inside New York City's Paramount Theatre. One hundred years later, it's still making music, right here in Wichita.

To celebrate, Century II is hosting the Wichita Wurlitzer's 100th Birthday Celebration on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 7 PM. That is TOMORROW!

Wichita organist Brett Valliant will perform on the historic instrument, with an evening featuring music, dancing and a silent film accompanied by the Wurlitzer.

It's a pretty fitting celebration for an instrument originally built to bring silent movies to life.

Learn more about the 100th birthday celebration here.

But how did one of the most famous theatre organs in America end up in Wichita?

That's where the story gets interesting.

Before Movies Had Sound

Go back to the 1920s. The Wichita Monrovians just beat the KKK in baseball. Wichita was in the midst of transitioning from an ag community to the Air Capital of the World

Movies were booming, but they didn't have synchronized soundtracks yet. If you wanted music, someone had to play it live.

Small theaters might have a piano. The grand movie palaces being built in America's biggest cities wanted something considerably more impressive.

Enter the theatre organ.

A theatre organ wasn't designed to sound like the organ you might hear at church. The goal was to allow one musician to control an entire orchestra.

Depending on the instrument, an organist could produce sounds resembling flutes, strings, trumpets and other instruments while controlling percussion and sound effects.

More than 10,000 theatre organs were built during the era.

And one of the most famous now lives in Wichita.

Welcome to the Paramount

On November 19, 1926, the new Paramount Theatre opened near 43rd Street and Broadway in New York City's Times Square.

This wasn't your neighborhood movie theater.

The Paramount was an enormous, lavish movie palace seating thousands of people in the entertainment capital of America.

One of its showpieces was a brand-new Wurlitzer theatre organ: Wurlitzer Opus 1458.

The original instrument contained 36 ranks and 2,604 pipes.

And then there was the man sitting at the keyboard.

Jesse Crawford and the Four Consoles

Jesse Crawford was one of the biggest names in theatre organ music and became the Paramount's featured organist.

The instrument became so closely associated with him that enthusiasts sometimes called it the "Crawford Special."

Crawford had input into the instrument's sound and specifications, but things got even more interesting a few years later.

In 1929, another console was added so Crawford could play duets with his wife, Helen.

Two additional stage consoles were added in 1931.

That meant four different organists could simultaneously play the same Wurlitzer from four different consoles.

The Paramount organ was reportedly the only Wurlitzer configured that way.

So... what exactly does this thing do?

Calling the Wurlitzer an "organ" almost undersells it.

Think of it as a 1920s version of a synthesizer connected to an orchestra.

The organist sits at four keyboards, plus a pedal keyboard controlled with their feet. Hundreds of controls allow them to select different sounds.

Behind the scenes, those controls activate actual pipes and instruments.

The original Paramount organ included everything from traditional organ pipes to a harp/marimba, xylophone, snare drum, tambourine, castanets and more.

One person could suddenly sound like an orchestra.

Then the Movies Learned to Talk

The technology that made theatre organs so useful eventually made them unnecessary.

"The Jazz Singer" arrived in 1927 and helped usher in synchronized sound. Within a few years, silent movies had largely disappeared.

The Paramount evolved into a major entertainment venue, hosting some of the biggest performers of the era.

The Wurlitzer remained inside until 1964, when the Paramount closed and its auditorium was eventually gutted.

Fortunately, someone saved the organ first.

The Wurlitzer was acquired by Richard Simonton, a theatre-organ enthusiast in Los Angeles, with plans to install it in another theater.

Those plans fell apart, leaving the instrument in storage in California.

That's when a group of organ enthusiasts more than 1,300 miles away started paying attention.

In Wichita, Kansas.

Wichita Decides It Wants the Wurlitzer

Wichita was preparing to replace the old Forum with a massive new civic center downtown.

Century II was under construction.

(Yes, Wichita was thinking of the future and tore down an iconic building in hopes the next one would bring Wichita into the future. No comment on what that means for today.)

And members of Wichita's theatre-organ community saw an opportunity.

A local group raised money to acquire the former Paramount Wurlitzer and bring it to Wichita.

Getting it here wasn't exactly a matter of loading it into the back of a pickup.

According to longtime Wichita Wurlitzer advocate Michael Coup, the instrument required four-and-a-half moving vans to transport and weighed roughly 66,000 pounds.

In early 1968, one of the world's great theatre organs arrived in Wichita.

And almost immediately, disaster struck.

Someone Set It on Fire

Before the organ could be installed in its new home, vandals broke into the area where it was being stored and set it on fire.

The giant control center that had once been played in Times Square was destroyed. Other parts of the instrument were damaged.

After everything it had survived, Wichita almost lost the Wurlitzer before most Wichitans ever had the chance to hear it.

The local group had two choices.

Give up or rebuild. You already know what Wichita decided to do.

Rebuilding Something Without Blueprints

The replacement console was commissioned from Balcom & Vaughan, an organ company in Seattle.

There was one significant problem: they didn't have a complete set of blueprints for the original console…

So company president Bill Bunch examined another enormous Wurlitzer console from San Francisco's Fox Theatre, taking measurements to recreate Wichita's lost console.

The project took roughly two-and-a-half years and more than 4,000 hours of work.

Meanwhile, Wichita volunteers were rebuilding and installing the enormous instrument behind it.

According to Michael Coup's firsthand account, volunteers contributed approximately 12,000 hours to restoring and installing the Wurlitzer.

Many were young people, including Coup, who was around 22 when the effort began.

Century II Was Built Around It

Calling the Wurlitzer something that's "inside Century II" isn't entirely accurate.

It's practically part of Century II.

The instrument was incorporated into Exhibition Hall because the concrete structure could support the massive weight of the equipment.

December 9, 1972: The Wurlitzer Plays Again

More than four years after the Wurlitzer arrived in Wichita, the work was finally finished.

On December 9, 1972, the former New York Paramount Wurlitzer made its Wichita premiere at Century II.

Forty-six years after it first filled a Times Square movie palace with music, it was alive again.

And Wichita wasn't content to turn it into a museum piece.

The Wurlitzer became a working instrument again.

In 1974, famous American organist Virgil Fox recorded an RCA album called "The Entertainer: Virgil Fox at the Mighty Wichita Wurlitzer." I think i may have found this record a few months back at a local record store (the one near Nomar).

In 1975, renowned theatre organist Billy Nalle became artist-in-residence at Century II, performing concerts and making recordings on the instrument for more than a decade.

The instrument has also been modified and expanded over the years, growing from its original 36 ranks to 38 ranks.

By this point, the Wurlitzer had developed two lives:

1926–1964: New York City

1968–today: Wichita

In fact, the organ has now spent considerably more time in Wichita than it ever spent in Times Square.

A Pretty Incredible Wichita Preservation Story

There are plenty of historic objects that survive because someone put them behind glass.

This isn't one of them.

The Wichita Wurlitzer survived because people kept using it.

People in New York saved it from the Paramount.

People in California kept it intact when another theater project failed.

Then a group of Wichitans decided Wichita needed a gigantic 1926 Times Square theatre organ.

They raised the money, hauled four-and-a-half moving vans worth of equipment across the country and nearly lost it all to a fire.

So they spent thousands of hours rebuilding it.

Then they put it inside Century II and kept on playing.

One hundred years after its debut in Times Square, the Wurlitzer is still doing exactly what it was built to do.

Not bad for something Wichita almost lost before we ever got to hear it.

What do you want to see us go deep on in a future deep dive?

Let us know!

Wichita Life Dinner Club

If you missed our Dinner Club last night, don’t worry, we have another coming up in just a few weeks.

This is a great way to meet new people (no matter if you’re introverted or extroverted).

It’s easy.

You take a short quiz. We match you up with people who are more likely to be your friends.

You meet 5 strangers for dinner followed by an afterparty with all of our friends.