Henry Flagler loved the pipe organ at his Gilded Age mansion in Palm Beach

Hiring a pop star to entertain at a private bash has long been a glittery option exercised by the rich, but Palm Beach's most famous Gilded Age resident embraced a different approach to delight his family, friends and captains-of-industry peers with melody at his island manse.

After all, Standard Oil partner, Florida developer and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler was a music-loving man who coveted the fact that his marble-pillared Palm Beach mansion — a 1902 wedding gift to his third wife, Mary Lily — included an artwork-adorned music room.

That spacious room showcased, among other things, a floor-to-ceiling instrument: a custom 1902 model pipe organ by J.H. & C.S. Odell & Co. Number of pipes? 1,249.

The instrument reflected the era's sweeping technological change, including the telephone and electricity, not to mention that organ music — whether involving Bach, ballads, waltzes or marches — was immensely popular during the Gilded Age.

To fire up attention, Flagler could have periodically hired celebrity organists — who existed back then — to play during his winters in Palm Beach until his death in 1913, but he seized upon a better idea: employ a talented, modest-mannered organist-in-residence.

That made more sense, allowing for frequent live music for gatherings large and small throughout each winter season, which is when the Flaglers occupied their 75-room Palm Beach mansion known as Whitehall, now the centerpiece of the Flagler Museum, 1 Whitehall Way.

Whitehall neighbored the first Palm Beach hotel Flagler built on the island.

That lakefront leviathan, once located roughly where the Palm Beach Towers condominium complex is today, is long gone, but the iconic grand oceanfront Palm Beach hotel Flagler founded two years later in 1896 — it was renamed The Breakers in 1901 — remains just east.

Whitehall's ornate Odell organ is played to this day, including a performance planned for Dec. 7 at the Flagler Museum's Christmas tree-lighting celebration.

"The Odell pipe organ is one of Whitehall's most treasured assets," museum Director and CEO Amanda Skier told the Daily News.

The instrument, she said, "connects us directly to the cultural and musical traditions of Mary Lily and Henry Flagler's time when music was at the center of home entertainment and social life.

"Our seasonal performances, which crescendo with the Christmas-tree lighting, bring that history to life, letting audiences hear the same beautiful tones that once delighted guests over a century ago."

Perhaps no one understands those "beautiful tones" better than Adam Brakel, a 21st-century celebrity organist, of sorts. He plays concerts and recitals all over the world when he isn't playing organs in Palm Beach, including at Royal Poinciana Chapel, where he's music director.

Brakel will play the Flaglers' Odell organ at the museum's tree-lighting celebration, just as he has played it during other events at the museum. Doing so, he vows, is "an absolute pleasure."

Pipe organs are "such a unique and complex instrument with a different disposition everywhere one goes," he told the Daily News.

The Flagler organ has "more sounds in common with a theater organ that plays popular music than it does a classical church organ," he said, but it "allows for most music." And the Flaglers were indeed music-lovers.

Mary Lily, who studied music at Peace College in her native North Carolina, was an enthusiastic vocalist and pianist who hosted musicales for a Palm Beach women's cultural group called the Fortnightly club.

Flagler's son from his first marriage, Harry Harkness Flagler, served as president of the Philharmonic Symphony of New York for years and later the New York Philharmonic.

Flagler himself adored music — organ music especially, although Whitehall featured other keyboard instruments, which brought family and friends pleasure.

As Flagler's hearing abilities were increasingly challenged with age — he was in his early 70s when he and Mary Lily, 37 years his junior, began spending winters at Whitehall — the full sound of the organ was immensely satisfying.

His organists-in-residence included Russell T. Joy, a talented organist and vocalist known for his work at Trinity College in New York, and then Arthur Spalding, starting in 1907. Spalding came to know the Flagler family well.

Flagler was hardly the only member of the Gilded Age's social and financial elite to feature an elaborate pipe organ at home.

The history of Gilded Age manses in New York, say, or Newport, Rhode Island, reveals some of them, too, boasted elaborate organs.

After the Civil War, more churches and concert halls became equipped with pipe organs — often thanks to wealthy Gilded Age parishioners — and that led to home organs for those who could afford such a luxury.

Those organs are "major works and when installed in a mansion require a large amount of space," Gary Lawrance, a New York architect who specializes in the history of Gilded Age homes, told the Daily News.

"The console where the player sat was usually decorated to blend with the interior design of the home," said Lawrance, author of "Houses of the Hamptons, 1880-1930" and an active online source called "Mansions of the Gilded Age."

"Then the pipes could either be made into impressive wall features or sometimes hidden behind tapestries or totally concealed with the music flowing through grills in floors, walls and ceilings — sort of like our own state of the art sound systems today," said Lawrence, who now researches Palm Beach estates.

If you go

The Dec. 7 Christmas tree-lighting celebration will take place noon-to-5 p.m.at the Flagler Museum and will not only include organist Brakel playing festive music on Whitehall's Odell organ, but melodies played by musician Ann Ackerson on the museum's Steinway grand piano.

A choir performance, a visit from Santa Claus and refreshments also are included in the celebration, when the museum's 16-foot-tall Christmas tree in the mane's Grand Hall will light up.

The event is free for members and their children at the "family" membership level and above, the Flagler Museum said. Otherwise, the event is $40 non-member adults; $20 for non-member children ages 6-12; and free for children 5 and younger.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Hear Flagler Museum's pipe organ played at Dec. 7 event in Palm Beach