The world’s largest (fully functional) pipe organ is not in a cathedral in Europe, or in fact a church or cathedral anywhere. It’s in an office building in Philadelphia, where I happen to work. It’s shame because it was part of a our Center City Macy’s which closed recently and it is not clear if the organ will need to be moved. Perhaps not if this website is accurate and still up-to-date. Anyway, I always had the impression it had been built specifically for the space it is in and would therefore be difficult to move, but I was wrong about that – it was built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and later moved to the Wanamaker Department Store here. So it could be moved again if it needs to be. With a pipe organ though, the space it is in is part of the instrument in a way, so if you move it that particular sound you got from the combination of the organ and the space will never happen again. It would be like moving your guitar or violin strings to another completely different instrument. Anyway, they still play it daily because apparently it needs to be played to stay in good shape. It rattles the walls throughout the building, which is cool.

I do have one more question – how common are not-fully-functional pipe organs and where are they? Maybe they are hard to maintain in good condition, and therefore for every fully operational one there are a bunch of old broken ones lying around? I don’t know.