In the late 19th century, an old fascination was trending once again: the Æolian harp. Constructed of wood, metal, and strings of brass or gut, these musical instruments were designed specifically to be played by the wind. For those wealthy men whose large houses were often topped with turrets and ornamented with weathervanes and lightning rods, a singing rooftop must have seemed too impossibly sexy to pass up.

One such instrument was built in 1881 for George Ellwanger, of Ellwanger & Barry’s Mt. Hope Nursery fame.

After one of his sons described the Æolian harp he had seen in his travels to Germany, George Ellwanger desired such an instrument for his own tower near Mt. Hope.

Though the above article says Dennebecq claimed he would finish the instrument on June 1st, other newspapers printing the same story would say “by the first part of July.” A follow-up report from July 7th implies that the harp had just been finished and was still in the process of tuning. The tower upon which it was to be installed was being outfitted with an anchored pivot.

The press release about the creation of this unique harp was released widely, with newspapers across the country reprinting it, as well as many periodicals such as “Musical Courier“, “Builder and Woodworker“, “American Builder“, “Harper’s Weekly“, and “The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature“.

Professor C. Dennebecq was Constant Louis Francois Dennebecq, originally from Belgium.

At the time of this Æolian adventure, 1881, the Professor Dennebecq made his shop and home at 15 Palmer’s Block, at No. 138 East Main Street. Work on the instrument took place, after a certain level of assemblage, upon the roof of the Palmer’s Block; the noise from the street below required Dennebecq to perform his tuning at night.

The instrument as described in the articles was a complex one operating off simple principles: an overall tube-shaped device mounted on a pivot to freely spin, a number of slots would allow wind to enter at a perfect angle to resonate some of the fifteen strings within. The strings were fifteen brass wires of various gauges, mounted loosely so as to vibrate in the winds, and tuned from High C to Low C.

Atop this, a lightning-rod and weathervane, in the form of a lyre, painted by Frank Van Doorn whose sign-painting studio was 107 Reynold’s Arcade.

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Constant Dennebecq

Constant Dennebecq emigrated from his previous home at No. 45 Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris, France and arrived in Rochester, NY somewhere around 1875; he first appears in the 1876 directory as a watchmaker at No. 142 East Main Street.

He quickly made his name known by introducing two unusual items to Rochester’s entertainment scene: the agioscope, a type of magic lantern, and the mélophone, a pumped free-reed instrument not unlike an accordion.

With the agioscope, Dennebecq presented a sort of slideshow of scenes from foreign lands and astronomical phenomena. Richard Hewson Lansing provided commentary.

Dennebecq began exhibiting the mélophone early on in Europe, with sources as far back as 1855.

Translation of above article: Mr. Constant Dennebecq will have the good fortune to perform a grand opening (played with orchestral accompaniment) before the performance, and then, in the break between the 3rd and 4th movements, a French quartet on the still unknown instrument called the mellophone. (It should be noted that several instruments have already been called this way, but their actual designation is “hand accordion”.)

Friday, January 26th, 1855 Pesth. Deutsches Theater
https://real.mtak.hu/159115/1/Teller-Molnar_Show-es-business-Pest-Budan.pdf

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Ellwanger’s Tower

The question at this point is where the æolian harp was to be mounted. What is known is that it was destined for the top of George Ellwanger’s “tower near Mt. Hope.”

To my mind, this could imply multiple different locations: one being the tower of Ellwanger & Barry’s Mt. Hope Nursery:

Or more directly, George Ellwanger’s own residence at the time, although there doesn’t appear to be a tower of any particular note on the structure–which is still extant–unless it was subsequently removed during renovations.

Another option does exist, however, and it’s the most satisfying: If we look back at the 1875 Atlas, an observatory is marked as being behind, or to the west of, George Ellwanger’s Mt. Hope home.

If we go to the 1880 View of Rochester, we see that while additional houses have been built for additional Ellwanger family members, the observatory is still there, in the form of a tower with a tall rod, mast, or pole of some sort on top.

After much research into the tower, I was able to find an illustration depicting the observatory tower in Rose O’Keefe’s “Rochester’s South Wedge”.

Upon showing this illustration to my helpful contact on this topic, Melissa S. Mead of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Rochester, she was able to state with certainty that it was from an issue of “Moore’s Rural New Yorker”, and pinpointed it to the issue of July 8th, 1871. I must thank Mead for her patience and persistence in this personal project.

The original publication of this illustration was in “Moore’s Rural New Yorker” July 8th, 1871, and was engraved by George Frauenberger, a Rochesterian wood engraver. This publication was from ten years before the construction of the harp. The staff atop the tower appears to bear a pennant, but could conceivably be an excellent mounting point for an instrument of this sort.

Could this observatory tower have been the intended site of Dennebecq’s harp? Possibly. As I’ve yet to turn up anything about this observatory tower, nor any additional publications regarding the installation of the æolian harp, I am forced to conjecture.

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Dennebecq’s Music Store

In 1887, Dennebecq would commit himself to a large new music store, in which he would make instruments, repair instruments, and offer courses in their use. This music store would be at No. 23 North Avenue, the old name of North Street, which is in turn the old name of Liberty Pole Way–albeit, the section in question is no longer extant, having become part of the plaza around the Liberty Pole. The store would operate in tandem with the Scottish watchmaker and jeweler, Jethro Baxter Crawford.

Dennebecq mixed his own rosin using methods perfected by Jean-Baptiste Villaume (1798-1875), a famous French luthier who excelled in crafting replicas of The Messiah Stradivarius and other fine historical instruments.

That equates to roughly here on the present-day map:

Though it was roughly thirty years prior to the below photograph of the corner of North Avenue and Franklin, the building at left of the below photo, next to the “Fee Building”, would have been the building in which Professor C. Dennebecq had his music store at No. 23 North Avenue.

Dennebecq’s business partner–or whatever their arrangement was–Jethro Crawford would die around 7 o’clock PM, November 27th, 1890 while reading in a book in the parlors of Emma Litster’s hotel, the Litster House.

This hotel would, in 1892, become the City Hotel, conducted by George Burr.

In 1892, another watchmaker, Charles Wagner, would join Dennebecq at his music store:

Also, this was the ad next to the above, which I found very off-putting:

The below book of bawdy songs contains an ad for Dennebecq’s music store. I’ve listed it as “date uncertain”, as the date given by the source site, 1880, cannot possibly be accurate given the address, which–again, due to the April, 1892 change from “North Avenue” to “North Street”, would necessarily have been published post April, 1892.

The 1894 Directory is the first in which Dennebecq’s store is given a North Street address instead of a North Avenue one:

It necessarily must have been before March of 1895, as at that time Dennebecq would move a couple doors south to Nos. 13-15 North Street.

Professor Dennebecq seems to have shared this premises with Paul Laurent, a former member of the French nobility who was at this time living in Rochester, working as a private French tutor.

Dennebecq had another business sideline: he produced an “azotic insect powder” insecticide, which he sold out of his music store. This, he likely devised as a means to protect his instruments from damage by wood-eating bugs.

Constant Dennebecq died May 20th, 1902.

Dennebecq’s widow, Louise Eulalie Barbier, died just over two years later, June 13th, 1904.

Since the Dennebecqs did not have pictures on Findagrave.com, I went to Mount Hope, found them myself, and uploaded my photos to their Findagrave pages. YOU’RE WELCOME.

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Dennebecq’s Daughters

Constant Dennebeqc and Louise Barbier had two daughters together, Charlotte and Camille.

Charlotte Dennebecq would become a soprano singer of some renown, after having studied under experienced tenor Charles Abercrombie.

On June 29th, 1907, Camille Dennebecq was married to John C. McConnaughey, a mail-carrier turned coal dealer, who was half of McConnaughey & Smith.

As of the 1911 Directory, McConnaughey would move from No. 227 Laburnum Crescent to a newly-built double dwelling at Nos. 535-537 Culver Road, right at the foot of Stratford Street, known today as MacBeth Street.

That corresponds to present-day No. 939 Culver Road, which is blurred out on Google Maps so I’ll just respect their wishes and not post a photo, which I could easily get with a five-minute walk. But I’ll let you do that instead. Consider it your homework.

On January 24th, 1914, Charlotte Dennebecq married Ray Calvin Stewart.

The couple would move into the double dwelling on Culver alongside Charlotte’s sister and brother-in-law.

Five short years later, McConnaughey would die, only 56 years old:

The late Charlotte Dennebecq and her widower had a daughter, Mary Louise Stewart, who herself had a cat named Moumone that spoke only French:

She would follow in her late mother’s footsteps, singing:

Ray Calvin Stewart would remarry in time, to Lucy Angeline Canfield. She would live until 1951.

Ray Calvin Stewart would pass away October 11th, 1953.

Marie Louise Stewart, daughter of Ray and Charlotte, would live until April 15, 1988, spending most of her later life in Sonoma, California. I was unable to find any entry for her grave on Findagrave.com.

The last strains of Dennebecq’s song-filled sojourn in Rochester faded into silence with the deaths of his daughters. Though we will never hear the Gallic lament of the Professor’s famous mélophone, nor hear the stuffy-nosed soprano of Charlotte or Camille, it pleases me to have brought them to this page for a brief moment.

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Not to Harp On It…

I’ll be honest, having bitten into the subject with such vigor, I was left a bit less than satiated, finding little more on the Æolian harp central to this topic. However, it drew my attention to several interesting figures, such as the storied Professor Dennebecq and his talented daughters, Charlotte and Camille. It also added another bit of context to interesting buildings I’ve visited before, such as Dennebecq’s nocturnal rooftop tunings at the old Palmer Block.

But I hungered for more; I was hoping for a diagram or drawing or schematic of the instrument. I should have liked confirmation of its eventual emplacement, whether it was on the observatory tower as I theorized or someplace else. I was also left wanting by my interactions with the Sorbonne and the French National Archives, but a lot of that was my personal struggle with their websites. I am not intelligent enough to navigate websites, research institutions, and a second language simultaneously. Who let me run this blog?

In the end, it’s a romantic notion that will remain a romantic notion: a harp singing in the wind, high atop a tower overlooking Mount Hope. The eerie strains would have been heard by those visiting the peaceful dead who rest in the cemetery below. The wail of its strings would have reached the ears of boaters along the Genesee River. Any carriage-driver along the streets of this green area may have stopped to ponder the ghostly voices, before carrying on its way. These sounds of a bygone age are forever muted.

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