History

1926:  New Denfeld High School completed.
1927:  Duluth merchants, residents and Denfeld students purchase George Kilgen & Son pipe organ from Capitol Theater in St. Paul.
1927:  Kilgen organ installed in the auditorium by the Wurlitzer Company.
Kilgen Organ is one of two pipe organs installed in Minnesota high schools intended for both school and public use.
1927-1960:  Well-known celebrities performed in the auditorium including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, organists E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox, Johnny Cash, John Phillips Sousa, Nat King Cole, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Mathis, Andy Griffith, and Mrs. Finkelson, violin, and organist Hugo Goodwin for the 1927 organ dedication.
1965:  Denfeld High School Auditorium appears in a Time magazine advertisement for Northern Natural Gas Company.
1927-1970:  Organ accompanies silent movies, performs in concerts, and accompanies soloists and choirs.
1927-1980:  Denfeld High School graduates march to the accompaniment of the original organ.
2007:  A grand reopening celebrates a $1.2 million restoration of the auditorium.

The history of the Kilgen name in organ building goes back to the first “Kilgen” organ built in 1640 in Germany by Sebastian Kilgen, an immigrant from France, who settled near Durlach. Descendents of Sebastian continued building pipe organs from their shop in St. Louis, Missouri until 1960, when the last Kilgen organ company went out of business. Well over 4000 Kilgen organs were built and installed in the United States from the mid-19th Century until 1960. The first electo-pneumatic George Kilgen and Son organ, like the Denfeld organ, was installed in a church in Douglas Arizona in 1916, and is still in use today. Additional information on Kilgen organs and the Kilgen family legacy can be found in the following article from Wikipedia: Kilgen - Wikipedia