Pipe Organ Trivia: Largest Pipe Organs
The largest pipe organ in the world terms of number of pipes, is the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ in Atlantic
City, New Jersey. It has
33,451 pipes (another report says 33,112 pipes) spread across 449 ranks. (It also has seven manuals, and 314 stops. it weighs about 150 tons.)
The largest pipe organ in the world based on physical mass weight and number of ranks, is the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, though it only has 28,750 pipes. They sit in
464 ranks. It weighs in at
287 tons. (It has 6 manuals and 'an array of stops.' (haven't found the count yet.)
The largest free-standing pipe organ in the world in terms of physical size is in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, Germany. With only 17,000 pipes, (17,974 in another report) it had 233 registers, and electric key action with programmable setter allowing for more than 4,000 settings, thus almost infinite ways to combine and coax sound and range from it.
.......Though the world does boast many among the largest pipe organs, Interestingly (at least to this Ent), this organ, along with the other 2 'largest above,' was built by an American firm.