For many people in Syracuse, the glorious news of the end of the First World War had come from the bell at City Hall.
But in the fall of 1942, the United States was involved in another World War, and this time, the city’s historic bell would have to be sacrificed for the American war effort.
The 5,000 lb. bell made chiefly of copper and tin, as well as 100 silver dollars which had been melted down to give it a silver ring, had been tolling over the city since 1858.
It had pealed when President Abraham Lincoln’s casket arrived in Syracuse and when the armistice ending the Great War had been agreed to.
For generations, city workers had set their watch by it. It had sounded the curfews for children, and signaled many of Syracuse’s most disastrous fires.
(Fire was the chief reason for the bell. In Syracuse’s earliest days, a system of church bells was used to announce fires. This led to an epidemic of false alarms and blazes which spread out of control before local fire volunteers could get there. The city council decided to have an official city bell made and, according to the city’s official website, “a dollar reward was paid to the first person to spot a fire and ring the bell – a custom sometimes abused.)
The cost of the bell tower at the new City Hall, finished in 1892, became a campaign issue in the city’s 1891 mayoral election and it is believed that it played a role in Mayor William Kirk’s defeat by William Cowie.
The bell, a fixture in city life, last tolled on Armistice Day 1939, then quieted because of a part becoming loose in its mechanism. The bell was deemed unsafe to ring.
It nearly got another chance in February 1942, when officials thought it could be used to spread the alarm of a possible German attack on the city, but it appears that plan was scuttled.
Instead, the old bell’s final contribution to the city was to be part of a “scrap metal harvest” which kept the vital steel furnaces of America pumping out weapons and war material.
The War Production Board in Washington said each location had to contribute “100 pounds of metal per capita of population.” Syracuse was on the hook for over 10,000 tons of scrap metal.
The bell would be part of that sacrifice.
On Sept. 29, 1942, Mayor Thomas Kennedy and War Council salvage personnel took part in a ceremony at the bell tower. They announced it would be cut apart with gas torches and removed in pieces before it “goes to do its part in the melting pot for defense.”
An editorial the next day paid a fitting, and patriotic, tribute to the bell which had stood over Syracuse and watched it grow from a city of 26,000 people to over 206,000.
“Most of Syracuse is visual. The bell alone has been auditory. The thought that it will be heard no longer will bring a poignant feeling of regret, solaced by the thought that it will serve the cause of liberty.”
Silent, or soon to be silent forevermore, this Syracuse bell. But hark! Once more its deep-toned voice booms over the city and countryside! Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Axis! It tolls for thee!”
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This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-416-3882.
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