It tolls for the city
A simple fix gives Boston back its bell
 The bell atop Faneuil Hall (center) was inoperable for decades. Both an electronic striker (right) and a new rope were installed. A hand-held device even allows the bell to be rung by remote (left). (Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan) |
When the new millennium was marked by bells ringing in other cities, Mayor Thomas M. Menino had nothing to offer. And while bells around Boston rang to mark the Fourth of July or the Red Sox and Patriots championships, the mayor couldn't contribute.
It's not that he didn't have a bell -- there's a historic one atop city-owned Faneuil Hall, in clear view of Menino's City Hall office -- but for as long as anyone can remember, it was inoperable, its striker rusted and frozen in place.
Tired of sitting out solemn and happy occasions when bells are called for, Boston has finally restored the ringing mechanism of the 1866 British-forged bell. The fix: a can of
A new rope was affixed to the striker. And, with an expectation of sounding the bell on a wide variety of occasions, officials also installed an electronic striker that is activated by a hand-held device similar to a garage door opener. (They discovered, with some dismay, that the signal cannot penetrate the sun-blocking film covering Menino's fifth-floor office windows, but it works fine from City Hall's eighth-floor offices.)
Officials are now talking about ringing it every Sunday at noon. July Fourth this year could have another tolling bell to go with the fifes and drums of downtown festivities. New Year's Eve is also being discussed.
"The opportunity and the ease of it now lends itself to all kinds of celebrations," said Michael Galvin, Menino's chief of basic city services. "You just couldn't live with yourself, with a historic building like that, not repairing the bell."
There are no records indicating the last time the bell worked, though some words scratched in the wood inside the bell tower by someone who rang the bell in 1945, at the end of World War II, indicate it was operating correctly then.
It has been sounded since, but only with considerable effort; on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, men were sent into the cupola with 5-pound mallets to stand on ladders and strike the bell 55 times, once for each of the Massachusetts victims. Similar arrangements were made to mark Boston's 375th anniversary two years ago. The mallet strikes made dents that are visible on the bell.
The current bell is a successor to several bells that have rung at Faneuil Hall over the years, marking some of the most august events in American history: the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, according to Brian LeMay, executive director of The Bostonian Society, a historic preservation group.
Later, bells rang each Saturday for a weekly meat market, and they probably sounded to summon members of the public to help fight fires.
"It would also be used to mark occasions like the Fourth of July, or if someone of eminence died," said John F. McCauley, curator of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts Museum in Faneuil Hall.
Previous bells, including a Paul Revere bell that is now in the belfry at St. John the Baptist Church in South Boston, were removed from Faneuil Hall after fires or redesigns of the building.
The current bell, 3 tons and 6 feet in diameter, was made in 1866, according to markings on the bell, and was forged by Naylor, Vickers & Co., a British company that at the time had offices at 80 State St.
Getting to the rope that rings the bell requires passing through a small door in a fourth-floor meeting room of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, climbing three ladders, and ducking through a narrow space among insulation and overhead pipes.
With the new wireless remote -- which allows options including a single toll or multiple tolls for up to a minute -- officials say they don't have to worry about that, though some purists recoil.
"I'm not sure I approve of that," LeMay said. "You should have to pull a rope to ring a bell."
Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. 
