Construction continues on new Abbey woodshop

Although it may just look like a cold metal frame and sound like a cacophony of hammering and honking now, the plot under construction behind Tommy Hall at SJU will eventually be the home for the creation of locally made wooden furniture and pipes for beautiful organ music.

The construction of the new Abbey woodshop and organ building studio is scheduled to finish in October. The $12 million project, which broke ground in July 2022, will provide a larger, central location for woodworking on campus and house the first-ever organ building studio on campus. While the Abbey has tried to plan for a new woodshop at times in the past, the pairing of the woodshop with an organ building studio was what pushed the project over the top, according to Director of Abbey Woodworking Fr. Lew Grobe.

“I think it’s really captivated people’s imagination of kind of an entrepreneurial spirit,” Grobe said. “This is something that could really maybe only happen here at St. John’s, to create a place that would support not only organ building and woodworking, but also possibly the teaching of future organ builders.”

Organ builder Martin Pasi, who led construction of the organ now in use in the Abbey church, played a key role in the project. His company, Pasi Organ Builders, will now move its base of operations from Seattle to Collegeville.

“Martin is really one of the most renowned organ builders in the United States; [he’s] very sought after,” Grobe said. “He’s looking to pass on the tradition that he’s built to the next generation, and I think that St. John’s was the place to do that.”

Benedictines have deep historical ties to organ building, Grobe said, as Benedictine monks have worked on the construction of organs since the early ninth century. Along with the project’s roots in organ building, it will also provide a better space for the continuation of the historical venture of woodworking at St. John’s, which has been a staple of the Abbey community since monks came to Collegeville. Currently, Abbey Woodworking operates out of several buildings on campus, with the main space dedicated to the craft dating back to 1903. Many of the tools they use are over 100 years old.

“It’s going to be really nice to have everything in one place,” said Will Ortega, SJU sophomore and woodshop student worker. “With everything in one building, there’s a lot less time that needs to be spent moving things around.”

Almost all the furniture in campus living areas comes from the woodshop, along with furniture in other commons spaces at SJU. The woodshop also produces other items, such as display cases for the St. John’s Bible, doors, caskets, urns, St. John’s crosses and more. All the wood used in the woodshop comes from the arboretum on campus, which is then sent to Browerville before making its way back to SJU to be milled and crafted, completing what Grobe described as a “closed loop.” Student workers like Ortega get to participate in this process every step of the way.

“You’re always learning new things there, just different techniques and practices that are used in furniture building that I had no idea about before,” Ortega said. “I applied with the knowledge of using a drill at home, and that was the extent of what I knew about wood working, so everything I’ve learned has been pretty cool.”

Grobe hopes the new space allows the centuries-long monastic tradition to reach even more people than before.

“I think the most exciting thing for me is for the students and the campus to see what I think is the liberal arts come together,” Grobe said. “You have engineering. You have the manual labor. You have the craft. All these things come together, and you get to actually see something being created.”