DEBENCE ANTIQUE MUSIC WORLD

'DeBence Antique Music World' is a museum in Franklin, Pennsylvania whose collection contains more than 100 antique mechanical musical instruments, including music boxes, calliopes, player pianos, and automated brass bands that date from the mid-1800s to the 1940s; as well as a number of other antiques. Many of the collection's mechanical instruments are rare; a number are among only a few manufactured, and a few are among the last in existence.^[1] Although the collection’s value cannot be measured, an offer for $13 million was once rejected.^[2]

Contents

History

Collection

References

External links

History

Dairy farmers Jake and Elizabeth DeBence began their collection in the late 1940s in Grove City, Pennsylvania. The DeBences became avid auction attendees after purchasing two Tiffany lamps for $1 each at one. The couple purchased the items at a time that many people were getting rid of them, and their collection continued to grow.
When the DeBences retired to Franklin, Pennsylvania in 1965, they housed the collection in their barn a few miles outside of town and opened it to public viewing as the DeBence Music Museum. After Jake's death in March 1992,^[3] Elizabeth put the collection up for sale, and a Japanese interest offered her $13 million. Feeling that her husband would have wanted the collection to remain intact and in the area, she turned them down.
Local residents formed a non-profit organization that raised $1 million in a little more than seven months to buy the collection. The effort included selling wooden music notes for placement in storefronts and local yards as a show of support for keeping the collection in Franklin. The museum is housed in the location of the former G.C. Murphy five and dime store on Liberty Street. DeBence Antique Music World opened for tours in 1994. In addition to the musical instruments, the collection includes a large number of antiques the DeBences collected, and it is displayed along with other items that have musical or local significance. The DeBences' collection of more than 40 Tiffany-style hanging lamps provide the museum’s lighting.

Collection

★ The 'Berry-Wood A.O.W. Orchestrion,' a nickelodeon that features 10 instruments directed by a paper roll, as well as lights, is the last functioning one of its kind in existence. Jake DeBence was offered $250,000 for it.

★ The '1850 Mandoline Basse music box from Switzerland', the collection's oldest piece, has metal butterflies that strike bells, accompanying the music of a spinning metal cylinder.

★ The 'Cremona Orchestrion' was manufactured in the early 1900s by the Marquette Piano Company of Chicago. The machine looks like an upright piano with Tiffany-style cut glass windows, but it differs from a player piano in that it does not need a player to pump it with their feet to make it work. Orchestrions were found in restaurants, bars and dance clubs. When the band took a break, patrons inserted nickels and dimes to keep the music going.

★ The hand-wound '1901 Gem Organette', which cost $3.25 in the Sears catalog, was an inexpensive alternative to the ornately decorated Ochestrions. The Gem Organette was one of the first music machines that was mass-produced. The music "cobs" cost 17 cents each, and the Organette was available free with the purchase of five pounds of sugar.

★ Behind a pane of glass in the six-feet-tall 'Regina Nickelodeon', a 27-inch metal disc with holes punched in it rotates when a coin is dropped in a push-slot. As the disc and the oversized music box play Johann Strauss II’s "Radetsky Waltz", dolls in dresses spin in time to the music.

★ The 'Mills Novelty Company's Violano Virtuoso' was so popular in 1911 that President of the United States William Howard Taft named it one of the eight inventions of the decade. The machine features a violin played by rollers with piano accompaniment and weights on the headstock that provide vibrato.

★ Among the collection's 'Victrolas' is an early model that features a platform above the record upon which dancing or boxing dolls can be placed to move as the record plays. Volume is controlled by opening and closing the front doors that contain the sound horn. The figures are worth more than the Victrola.

★ An 'Edison Cylinder Phonograph'' from the 1890s plays wax cylinders.

★ The 'Artizan calliope' from the late 1920s is one of only three such machines ever manufactured.

★ The prototype 'Wurlitzer Caliola' band organ that is larger than the models that were actually sold.

★ The 'Wurlitzer carousel organ' is from the Idora Park amusement park in Youngstown, Ohio.

★ The 'Mills Ferris Wheel Automatic Phonograph' is an early jukebox from the 1920s whose records each have their own turntables.

★ The '1931 Crosley Grandmother Clock' is an early clock radio.

★ The 'Wurlitzer Pianino' is one of the fewer than two dozen that remain.

★ The 'Cremona J "Tall Case' is one of only a few manufactured.

References

1. DeBence Antique Music World: A Brief History
2. The music never stops
3. Obituaries:Elizabeth Jane DeBence

External links

★ DeBence Antique Music World official site