theater entrepreneurs who started with a nickelodeon in the neighborhood in 1908.

The single-screen movie house on the city's famed Castro Street has offered organ music since 1922. Just before films and programs start, musicians famously play rousing compositions before dramatically sinking back to the organ pit below stage level on a mobile lift.

The Wurlitzer that's greeted audiences at the theater for the past 30 years is privately owned, and the owner has left the Bay Area, along with the organ console and three-quarters of the pipework. Purchasing and refurbishing available components for the instrument, according to SFCoda, would make far less financial sense than investing in the newfangled $700,000 creation, which is being funded with help from private donations, the Castro Theatre, a grant from the Schapiro Fundin New York City, and a $40,000 Indiegogo campaign now under way.

The new organ, a fully restored Wurlitzer/Kimball theater pipe organ, will feature seven keyboards and more than 800 stops, the part of the instrument that admits pressurized air to the organ pipes. On the digital side, the gigabyte-heavy instrument will rely on an orchestral sample library used in the film-scoring industry. It's expected to be one of the largest pipe/digital organs in the world.

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"In short, any musical (or synthesized) sound can emerge from this instrument, sounding totally realistic and under multiple layers of control," SFCoda says.

The Castro Symphonic Theatre Organ, as it's been dubbed, is already under construction in Johnson City, Tenn., under the watchful eye of Allen Harrah, the recognized pioneer of hybrid organ technology