awarded the contract for what would be his final instrument, for the Washington National Cathedral. The instrument was dedicated in the fall of 1938, to wide national acclaim. World War II and the resulting materials shortages and related financial troubles forced the company to file for bankruptcy on October 1, 1941. The Methuen Organ Shop burned to the ground on June 17, 1943; the adjacent Music Hall and its organ were saved. In January 1947 Skinner joined the Schantz Organ Company in Orrville, Ohio. In 1949, then in his eighties and almost completely deaf, Skinner retired from organ building completely. He then began writing the book The Composition of the Organ, which remained unpublished in his lifetime, and was completed and published by his son in 1980. Skinner was always a prolific writer, with his letters penned to the editors of The Diapason and The American Organist appearing in those publications from the 1940s onward, wherein he worked to defend his tonal ideals, and attempted to regain lost territory on the American musical landscape. As early as the mid-1930s, Skinner saw many of his instruments rebuilt or modified beyond recognition, while others were simply removed and thrown out wholesale, in the name of "musical progress." Even three of the "Landmark Organs" mentioned in the previous section were subject to this trend, with modifications to the University of Chicago organ being carried out only a few years after its completion. Not every organist felt obliged to follow the dictates of the "organ reform movement" and any discussion of Skinner would be incomplete without mentioning his extensive, informative and influential writings on the organ and its music, published in books and national journals over most of his career. Following the death of his wife Mabel in 1951, Skinner entered a downward spiral from which he never recovered. The tonal revision of his earlier organs at St. John the Divine (op. 150, 1911), St. Thomas (op. 205, 1913) and his final large organ built for the National Cathedral all fell subject to this trend by the mid-1950s, further complicating his emotional state as he saw his life's work and ideals (and by extension, himself) gradually becoming extinct. Fortunately, in recent decades there has been a large resurgence of interest in restoring E. M. Skinner's instruments to their original condition. In many cases in which Skinner's pipework was replaced with more generic or baroque