When Thomas Moody’s fingers hit the keyboard of The Presbyterian Church’s pipe organ once again Sept. 13, he will be touching a piece of history.

For 46 years, Moody has been filling the 190-year-old downtown Bowling Green Church with organ music.

For the last 36 years, that music has been provided by a unique pipe organ that has recently undergone a specialized restoration. In the early 1970s, the congregation decided to order an Aeolian-Skinner organ from the notable Boston manufacturer for the then-steep sum of $48,500. But before the organ could be finished and installed, the company with roots to 1901 went bankrupt.

A Dallas-based organ builder, Robert Sipe, saved the day.

“He came to us and said he’d take the contract,” Moody said. In 1973, Sipe finished the installation work on the complex instrument, which thus became the last Aeolian-Skinner organ ever put into use.

The organ has proven to be resilient with only minor repairs and tuning needed over the intervening years before some church remodeling revealed a larger problem.

“The bane of organs is carpeting” that deadens sounds, Moody said. “When we took up some of the carpeting in the church, we found some of the lower (bass) part of the organ was deficient.”

Finding someone to restore the organ, which features 1,527 handmade wood and metal pipes and numerous moving parts made of leather and wood, was more complicated than consulting the Yellow Pages.

After a national search, Taylor and Boody Organbuilders of Staunton, Va., agreed to undertake the restoration effort. The church congregation dutifully raised about $185,000 needed to restore the organ – “We have a very generous congregation,” Moody said – and Taylor and Boody technicians have been working on various parts of the project for several months.

This week, they’ve been installing new, hand-made pipes and “voicing” them (akin to tuning a piano).

George Taylor of Taylor and Boody arrived Wednesday in Bowling Green from Virginia to oversee the last stages of the project.

“We mostly build new organs,” Taylor said. “This is a unique project. We’ve never done anything quite like this.”

The project involved an extensive cleaning, replacing parts and making 157 new pipes by hand.

Church music director David Gibson said the organ adds significantly to the congregation’s worship.

“I think a pipe organ has a sense of grandeur an electric organ can’t touch. There’s also a physical presence to it,” he said.

The sentiment is echoed by the Rev. Matthew Covington, the senior pastor.

“I’ve often asked myself why not another instrument? But there’s not another instrument that can create a sense of power that speaks to God’s power,” he said.

The restored organ – which would have a replacement value approaching $1 million – will officially be unveiled at 3 p.m. Sept. 13 as the church kicks off its annual Liturgical Arts Festival with a choir and organ concert. The event will also feature a special honor – the church plans to officially rename the instrument the Thomas N. Moody Organ.

Moody said while he’s grateful for the use of the smaller electric organ he’s been able to play in the church during the restoration, he’s greatly missed playing the historic Aeolian-Skinner he’s been “married to” for 36 years.

When asked what the honor – and the chance to again play the organ – will mean to him, Moody’s voice cracked with emotion.

“It’s sort of a dream realized,” he said.