How the Organ Business Changed the City
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- The Moller Landscape in Hagerstown
- The “Moller Church”
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Figure 10: The different labor hierarchies in the factory. At left is a flue voicer; in the middle a woodworker; and at far right, an inspector in the woodyard. The hierarchy of skilled labor in the factory was not, however, always easily accepted by those who were not woodworkers or flue voicers, and hence, not at the upper levels of the pay scale. Moller paid his employees according to their skill level and thus the most skilled employees—the woodworkers, followed closely by the tuners and voicers—were paid more than the people who ran the wiring, dried the wood, assembled the organ, or who performed other duties in the factory. The friction between different classes of workers can be seen in a 1903 labor strike at the factory, which was the only unionized strike against Moller until the late 1980s. According to Sarah Newton’s thesis on M.P. Moller, in 1903, a “professional propagandist was sent to preach unionism to the employees.”9 After months of agitation, most of the workers went on strike, but “the older and more skillful workers … remained at their benches.”10 While Newton never explicitly says that it was the woodworkers who stayed at the job, it can be presumed that the ‘more skillful’ workers were indeed the woodworkers who were at the top of the factory’s labor hierarchy. Better paid and longer employed, these workers presumably felt that their wages were adequate, and thus they did not join the strike. Despite claims to egalitarianism and camaraderie amongst all the organ employees, the situation must not have been as equal or as benign as Moller believed if the majority of his work force walked out after only a few months of unionist ‘agitation.’ The strike did not last long, however, and soon after the initial walk out, entire workforce returned to the factory. Newton does not state what the employees wanted from Moller, but she does allude to Moller’s treatment of the situation. She comments, “whatever his personal feelings toward unionism, Moller’s obvious duty was to protect the interests of those who remained.”11 The interests of these remaining workers, the ‘oldest and most skillful’, were inextricably tied to the protection of their higher salary and to maintaining the integrity of the labor hierarchy at the factory. One can infer that ‘protecting their interests’ meant keeping the wage scale near to what it was before the strike. Thus the traditional hierarchy of labor in the factory was preserved and M.P. Moller’s only brush with a union organized strike ended. The Moller Landscape in HagerstownEarly Factory and Houses The evidence of the Moller legacy can be seen in other buildings besides the main Moller factory on Prospect Street. It is present in many other commercial and civic structures dotting the urban landscape of the city. Moller’s city building efforts city can also be seen in Moller’s first Hagerstown factory that was located on Potomac Avenue north of Broadway. The land for that factory was also acquired for Moller by members of the local community. As part of the deal to bring Moller to Hagerstown from Pennsylvania, members of the town offered “to place at his disposal every possible financial assistance to build an imposing factory in their city, while his only obligation was to guarantee constant employment of no less than eight men.”12 To seal the deal, “some 19 or 20 firms and individuals became jointly the mortgages of a lot of land on which the $450 factory was to be built.”13 Moller paid off this mortgage in ten years. By April of 1881, Moller opened operations in a two-story brick building with dimensions of approximately 75 x 200 ft.14 In 1881, that area of the town was outside the city limits, and the streets were not paved or graded. Moller lived near his new factory and paid to have road improvements done on the nearby streets. While this factory burned to the ground in 1895, the memory of Moller in the area can be seen in some of the basic improvements that he made before that section of Potomac became part of the city itself. Moller’s legacy in Hagerstown can also be seen in his residence. Moller lived in two houses in Hagerstown; only one of these structures still exists, but both were in close proximity to his respective factories. The first Moller residence in Hagerstown has been town down, and no known pictures of it exist. When Moller completed his new house at 441 North Potomac, he donated the building to Washington County and it became the first Washington County Hospital. Today, the building no longer exists; a Sheetz gas station and grocery store is on the site. Peter Daniels, M.P. Moller’s grandson, described the building as “an enormous Victorian looking house, [with] lots of turrets on it.”15 While Moller did not build this house himself, he purchased it because it was located across the street from the site of his original factory building on the then northern edge of the city. Since Moller ran the factory himself, oversaw every aspect of production, and taught many of his new workers the organ making craft, it was probably essential that he be as physically close to the site as was possible.
Today the Moller family has no involvement with either the house or the factory building. This does not mean, however, that the family’s influence is absent from these two sites. The connection between home and factory was physically evident in the siting of Moller’s second home. While today there seems to be little connection between the extravagant houses on North Potomac and the quite factory and smaller neighborhood on North Prospect, the two sites were intimately connected by the planned siting and the usage of the Moller family. This shows that while the neighborhoods might currently be physically distinct from one another, an underlying connection once existed between the two. This connection of uses could possibly be recreated at some point to join together two seemingly opposing areas of the city, by knitting together the residential and industrial fabrics into a recreated urban tapestry. The “Moller Church”Another example of Moller’s involvement in the broader physical landscape of Hagerstown would be the St. John’s Lutheran Church, which has existed in Hagerstown since 1795.17 When M. P. Moller first arrived in Hagerstown in 1881, he joined the congregation of that church. During Moller’s lifetime, he was personally responsible for installing a new organ, new pews, and his woodworkers redid the finishings and designs on the woodwork in the church. The entire Moller family worshipped in that space, and in time it even became k Figure 11: The "Moller Church." From papers of Peter Moller Daniels. nown as the “Moller Church.”18 This space, while not one of Moller’s industrial or commercial buildings, acted as an extension of his influence in the civic realm of the city. His philanthropy in rebuilding and shaping the physical interior space of this church created an indelible impression in the minds of Hagerstown residents that remains to this day. Thus the cultural memory of Moller and the presence of his family has been firmly impressed upon the space of this building. The Dagmar Hotel The Dagmar Hotel is another example of how the memory of Moller persists in Hagerstown despite the fact that the family no longer has any vested interest in the building. The Dagmar was constructed by M.P. Moller in 1911, and was named after his daughter, who was in turn named after the medieval Queen Dagmar of Denmark. The Dagmar Hotel, located in the corner of Antietam and Summit Avenues, took advantage of the booming commercial and industrial enterprises of the city; it catered to business people and was billed as the leading hotel in town for tourists. An original brochure advertising the hotel claims that the Dagmar had the following amenities: [The Dagmar] is absolutely fireproof, it being of concrete construction, cool in summer and warm in winter … It is six stoires high, contains 80 rooms, 56 of which have private baths, and hot and cold running water in all rooms … The roof garden commands a very magnificent view of the city. The hotel is conducted on the European plan, and a fine dining room is operated in connection … This hotel is centrally located, opposite the Post Office, and B & O R.R. Station, and one square from the C.V. [Cumberland Valley] and N.W.R.R. [Norfolk and Western] Stations, and within one block of the business district of the city.19 T  his hotel was technologically modern for the time and used concrete as a new structural material to help keep the building fireproof. Moller’s many experiences with fires at his factory may have convinced him that concrete would be a more efficient and safe building material to use in the center of the downtown.20
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