in New York City. Among the largest organs built by J.H. & C.S. Odell were: Temple Emmanu-El, Fifth Avenue and Forty-Third Street (Op. 386 IV/65, 1901), the Church of St. Nicholas, Fifth Avenue and Forty-Eighth Street (Op. 368, IV/50, 1899) and St. Joseph's Church, Albany, New York (Op. 483 IV/59, 1912). The company operated from the works on west 42nd Street well after the turn of the century. By the time the company signed the contract for a new factory to be built in Mount Vernon in January 1928, the opus list had already grown to over 580 organs. Unfortunately this investment will ill-timed: the infamous 1929 stock market crash came 21 months later, and for the next few years production was a mere fraction compared to the boom of the teens and twenties. Depression era After a steady and successful run of almost seventy years, the firm was almost completely wiped out by the financial ravages of the Great Depression. The company had invested heavily in the building of the new Mount Vernon factory, which it was forced to sell. The company survived the years leading into the Second World War with some restoration and occasional new organ work. Operating out of a two floor shop on Morningside Avenue in Yonkers, the firm concentrated largely on maintenance, with nearly 300 service agreements in the New York metropolitan area. From the postwar era to the 1970s, while the various neoclassical tonal movements threw the domestic organ building world into upheaval, the Odells labored in relative obscurity. In 1979 firm Director William H. Odell (son of Caleb H.) died, the result of major coronary failure. As manager and sole remaining voicer of the firm, William's death seriously diminished the abilities of the firm. In order to meet commitments to existing clients, the workload was distributed to third party contractors, some of whom tragically used the opportunity to further their own businesses, as well as help themselves to company resources, occasionally without compensation to the firm. In an attempt to restructure, during the early 1980s the company was reorganized from a family proprietorship into a Corporation with elected officers selected from among family stockholders. It was in this fashion that William's youngest brother Harry Odell, acting as Director, made an effort to continue the firm. Regrettably, the inability of the firm leadership to reposition itself in accordance with market shifts, combined with