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From Attache Magazine:
TWICE EVERY BUSINESS day since 1911, something happens at Philadelphia’s old Wanamaker department store the likes of which never happen anywhere else. To many shoppers, it’s familiar and soothing. Others find it impossibly mysterious. It’s enough to draw visitors from other states and countries. It has left some in tears. And no, it’s not a sale.
Rather, twice a day, a small switch is thrown behind an unmarked door on the second-level mezzanine, powering up the blowers and feeding pressurized air into the wind chests and allowing the keys on the nearby console to summon the celestial voices of thousands upon thousands of pipes. This is to say, it’s showtime for the Wanamaker pipe organ. For reference, consider: The organ in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral boasts some 8,000 pipes; the Sydney Opera House, around 10,000. The Mormon Tabernacle’s pipe organ in Salt Lake City shakes it congregants with the power of 11,623 pipes. And the Wanamaker? It has no fewer than 28,482 pipes. Some of them are 32 feet long. Some are big enough for a child to crawl through. There are so many pipes that the deep, sugar-pine chambers that house them (concealed behind ornamental grilles in the court’s south wall) stretch seven stories up to the roof. | 
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