$1 million to the University of Pennsylvania. He also purchased a pipe organ manufactured by the Austin Organ Company that had been displayed at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926 and donated it to the University of Pennsylvania. It was incorporated into Irvine Auditorium when the building was constructed and is known to this day as the Curtis Organ, one of the largest pipe organs in the world. (The largest is said to reside in Philadelphia's John Wanamaker Building, only twenty blocks east of Irvine Auditorium.) Curtis donated pipe organs to many institutions in Philadelphia and on the day of his funeral, all of those organs were played in his honor. In memory of his boyhood music teacher, Hermann Kotzschmar, for whom he had been named, Curtis in 1912 donated the Kotzschmar Memorial Organ to Maine's Portland City Hall Auditorium. In Thomaston, Maine, he funded the 1927–29 recreation of Montpelier, the demolished 1795 mansion of Revolutionary War general Henry Knox. Curtis was a major organizer and backer of the Philadelphia Orchestra, founded in 1900. In its early years, he paid off its debts anonymously. Curtis's daughter, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, founded Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music in 1924 and dedicated it to her father. Gallery Notes References External links A biography of Curtis Curtis's page at the Advertising Hall of Fame 1850 births 1933 deaths Cyrus People from Cheltenham, Pennsylvania Businesspeople from Philadelphia Businesspeople from Portland, Maine 19th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople American magazine founders American newspaper chain founders American media executives American philanthropists Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery Ladies' Home Journal