January 6, 1999
The Music House: a jewel in our backyard
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
There is a little known jewel right here in our own backyard. The Music House Museum in Acme and its extensive collection of rare mechanical musical instruments draws thousands of tourists each year, but to locals it is mostly unknown.
"The museum draws people nationally but so often a tourist asks at a local gas station where we are and they don't know, have never heard of us" said co-founder Dave Stiffler of Acme Township. "That's why we cut our admission at odd ends of the season to try and entice local people."
And entice people they did, at least until the storm hit Saturday afternoon. More than 65 people came through Friday and Saturday, taking advantage of the half-price admission fee to see the exhibits. Sunday visits, of course, were canceled due to the weather.
Many visitors came for the first time despite living nearby, like Webb and Alice Buell. The Buells have been vacationing in the area for decades and recently retired here from Lansing. Although they live just down the street from the Music House Museum, they finally came Saturday afternoon after seeing an ad in the paper about the reduced admission.
"We come by here all the time," said Alice Buell of Acme Township. "I really wish we had come more frequently, the Mortier organ was just amazing. We'll be back in the summer."
"It is just fantastic," agreed Webb Buell.
The museum draws around 22,000 visitors a year between May and December. Many school groups come each year and the museum is also a stop on nationwide coach tours. These groups comprise about a third of the visitors. Walk-in tourists make up another third of the museum's visitors and local residents the remaining third.
"We do get local residents who come back periodically bringing others with them," said Stiffler, an architect whose has pursued his hobby of collecting and restoring mechanical musical instruments for decades.
The Music House Museum started 15 years ago when Stiffler and two other collectors consolidated their pieces and opened the display to the public. The museum's mission is to educate about the development of mechanical musical instruments and entertain people with them.
Housed in an extensively renovated dairy barn just north of Acme, the museum's exhibits include a music boxes, pipe organs, player pianos, nickelodeons and jukeboxes. The museum also offers a self-guided tour of the history of phonographs and radio.
The centerpiece of the collection is a Mortier Dance Organ from 1922, an 18-foot by 32-foot automated instrument with 97 keys that reproduces a 43-piece dance orchestra. The museum has acquired more than 2,000 different pieces that the organ can play, ranging from waltzes and rumbas to swing and Christmas music. One of only 100 surviving Mortier organs, it is the only one on display in Michigan.
All pieces in the collection have been painstakingly restored, labeled and displayed. The museum employs two people to work full-time on restoring the pieces they acquire.
"Most of these pieces come in poor condition," said Andy Struble, who joined the staff it's first season. "One came through that survived a house fire. We make almost everything ourselves here."
The exhibits are arranged in rooms decorated to recreate a turn-of-the-century atmosphere. There is the Lyric Theater featuring Reproduco organ and a Violano-Virtuoso, an automated violin. The Hurry Back Saloon includes two nickelodeons and the Acme General Store has a Regina Corona Music Box.