This instrument serves as both the teaching and performing organ at Villa Maria College of Buffalo, NY.  
According to a former Delaware employee, the story of this organ is quite interesting.  In the mid 
1960's, shortly after Villa Maria College was founded, the college acquired some kind of grant to 
acquire a pipe organ for their newly built recital hall.  The instrument was originally supposed to 
be a smaller 3 manual organ of about 25 ranks.  During the building of the organ, the College 
decided that they didn't want the organ anymore.  This posed quite a problem, as the Delaware Organ 
Co. had already began a considerable amount of work on the instrument.  

To avoid any legal problems, Delaware worked out a deal with the College, and agreed to change the 
scope of this organ and to build a 2 manual organ of 17 ranks with mostly used pipework and a very 
basic Holtkamp style key desk console.  The organ is also designed in the typical 1960's Holtkamp 
style with a completely exposed Great and Pedal division, and the Swell box completely exposed.  
The organ is on a stage, and the Great is in the middle, the Swell box is to the left, and the Pedal, 
with the exception of the low octave of the 16' Subbass, is to the right and elevated.  

The elevated Pedal division is nearly impossible to tune, and a good amount of the Swell division is 
un-tunable because of the awkward placement of some of the pipes.  With over 45 years of service, 
unfortunately the organ has been seriously neglected over the past 15 years and the organ is really 
suffering because of it.  

The organ really needs to be thoroughly rebuilt.  There is a plethora of dead notes all over the organ, 
and the organ is completely unusable between about January 1st, until about the last week of April or first 
week of May.  During that period of time, several notes from the Swell and Pedal divisions cipher 
upon turning the organ on.  Once the weather gets warmer, the ciphers stop, however, the dead notes 
are still present.  The recital hall that the organ is placed in, is also not a very organ-friendly 
acoustical environment.  In fact, the hall is not a friendly acoustical environment for any 
instrument.

If the organ worked properly, this would really not be a bad organ, as basic as 
it is.  The organ is 
essentially completely straight with the exception that the low octave of the 8' Spitz Principal on 
the Great is shared with the 8' Principal in the pedal.    Unless Villa Maria College suddenly experiences 
a surplus in organ students, the organ unfortunately does not have much hope of being repaired.  The 
lack of organ students IS the primary reason that the College refuses to put money into the instrument, 
even though there is talk of a "complete" renovation of the recital hall in which the organ stands.