Park Avenue's Greatest Pipes

Inside the organ at St. Bartholomew's, enveloped in 18th-century surround sound.

- JUSTIN DAVIDSON

PAOLO BORDIGNON AND THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA will perform on May 24.

WHEN THE MORNING light sneaks between midtown's skyscrapers, the gilded mosaics of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue catch the sunshine and toss it indoors, making the recesses and woodwork gleam. Organ pipes shoot toward the ceiling, suggesting a structure held up by columns of air. But I'm here to look beneath the church's resplendent surface to the network of wires, ducts, switches, levers, and membranes that makes the building sing. Led by organist Paolo Bordignon, I ride an elevator to the top of the nave, skirt a rooftop playground, crouch beneath a stone arch, squeeze down a dark and curving passageway, climb an iron ladder, cross a catwalk five stories above the church floor, and duck into a domed chamber crammed with pipes. The smallest tubes would fit in a fist; the largest are long wooden boxes that lie on the floor and double back on themselves. We're standing in what's called the "celestial division."