The Providence Performing Art Center Awarded a Save America's Treasures Grant

PPAC is the recipient of a Save America’s Treasures Collection Grant from the National Park Service. The grant funding will be used to restore the Theatre’s historic “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ; PPAC received $650,000 which would cover approximately half the cost of the project.

Singleton added, “PPAC is the only Rhode Island organization among a half-dozen in New England to receive funding from the NPS. We are honored to have been chosen to receive this prestigious grant.”

Alan J.  Chille, PPAC General Manager, said, “Our Mighty Wurlitzer is a significant part of PPAC history and an important piece in music history as well. Since 1982, we have offered free Wurlitzer concerts for the community. In the past couple of years, we have expanded our concert offerings so that more community members are on the PPAC stage; for example, we have hosted Juneteenth concerts and St. Patrick’s Day concerts in collaboration with local organizations.”

The Mighty Wurlitzer is a 5-manual, 21-Rank (5/21) pipe organ built by The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in 1927. It is an extremely rare musical instrument; The Wurlitzer Company built only three of these pipe organ consoles. PPAC’s original House Organist Lincoln W.N. Pratt assisted a small team of PPAC Trustees in finding the privately-owned 5/21 organ. PPAC purchased the organ in 1982; it has been a treasured part of the Theatre ever since.

Lincoln W.N. Pratt was PPAC’s House Organist from 1982 until his passing in 1998. Mr. Pratt played the organ prior to many Broadway shows and he helped create the first, free Wednesdays at the Wurlitzer concert series which has now become the Wonders of the Wurlitzer series; these concerts are still free and open to the public. Since 2020, Peter Edwin Krasinski, a renowned organist and silent film accompanist, has been PPAC’s House Organist.

The NPS is awarding $25.7 million in Save America’s Treasures grants this year to fund 59 projects that will preserve nationally significant sites and historic collections in in 26 states and the District of Columbia. The award of $25.7 million will be matched by almost $50 million in private and public investment. NPS partners with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services to award the grants. 

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