Month: July 2025

(This is Part 2 of a two part story about the bells by Divine Stone co-author Robert F. Rodriguez)

Several decades (and two bishops) passed with no plans to resume construction at the Cathedral. Bishop Horace Donegan, like his predecessor Bishop Charles Gilbert, said that no further construction would take place during his episcopate. 

The climate changed in 1972 with the investiture of Bishop Paul Moore, who brought in James Parks Morton, who studied architecture at Harvard, as the new Dean at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Both the Bishop and Dean felt the time was right to resume construction following New York City’s tumultuous 1960s. The Dean moved forward with a plan to employ traditional medieval building methods and train neighborhood men and women from Harlem to raise the towers and, hopefully, install a grouping of bells. 

John Taylor and Co. furnished a diagram for a circular layout of a ringing peal of 12 bells and a Bourdon bell in June 1977, two years before the first stone was cut by the new apprentices.

A December 15, 1978 letter, between Payne Studios, a New Jersey-based installer, and John Taylor and Co. expressed concern about how the 13-bell proposal would fit into the planned bell chamber. Payne Studios felt there would be inadequate space for 13 bell ringers and urged John Taylor and Co. to revise the plans. The letter ended on an upbeat note: “We are getting all excited here.”

The new plan came in less than two weeks and proposed a peal of eight bells and a tenor bell weighing 2.1 tons and measuring just over 5 feet in diameter.

The number and size of the bells seemed to change once again a few years later with still another plan for a Bourdon bell surrounded by the ringing peal. 

An April 1980 letter from the general manager of John Taylor and Co. to Dean James Parks Morton describes a 7’7” diameter Bourdon bell surrounded by a ringing peal. The letter adds, “I feel that it is important that this decision be made at an early stage so that the design work for the tower can proceed without alteration.” Prophetic words as will be seen in later correspondence.

As of November 1980, “present-day” prices were furnished to the Cathedral. The “present-day” qualifier may be due to the fluctuating costs of metals for casting the bells. The ringing peal and Bourdon would cost $372,225.92 and the ringing peal only, $225,926.14.

A fundraising brochure prepared by the Cathedral Development office, probably from around 1980, listed $250,000 as the suggested donor contribution for a “Peal of Twelve Bells, plus the Thirteenth, or Bourdon, ‘Great William,’ in honor of William Thomas Manning, Tenth Bishop of New York.”  It did not specify the size of the Bourdon bell.

The flow of letters between the Cathedral and the bell foundry seemed to halt as construction of the southwest tower proceeded in fits and starts during the early 1980s. 

A December 1986 Cathedral Newsletter gave an overly ambitious 1994 projected completion date for both towers, at a point when the southwest tower was barely one-quarter completed.

“The entire St. Paul’s tower is expected now to soar 323 feet above Amsterdam Avenue by 1992, the centenary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Cathedral,” the article states.

Tower construction was at a crossroads in the mid-1980s and a decision had to be made whether any kind of bells would ever resonate in the tower. 

This responsibility fell on the shoulders of John Walsh sometime in 1986.

An August 2021 Divine Stone article provides the background: “Walsh, Master of the Works, came to the stoneyard during a rocky period. Master Builder Jim Bambridge had gone back to England. Master Masons Alan Bird and Stephen Boyle had also left. Money was tight and morale was at an all-time low. John Walsh’s main role to begin with was to stabilize the program, get a handle on finances and chart a way forward.”

Much of the design work was complete but there were several major items outstanding, including the fabrication and installation of the steel bell frame and setting the concrete ring beam that was to tie the masonry of the tower together directly below the base of the bell frame. 

In April 1988, Walsh moved ahead with the pouring of a four-foot deep concrete ring beam to strengthen the southwest tower, support the potential weight of bells and serve as a base for the bell frame.

The cement may not have been dry on the ring beam when a John Taylor and Co. interoffice memo from April 6, 1988 revealed: “JOHN WALSH RANG.

1) THEY DO NOT have money to buy the ring of bells.

2) They do not have money to buy the carillon.

3) He has the configuration drawings of the carillon – could they put the frame in now for the largest 14 bells only?

4) Wants engineer’s drawings and quickly – wants to set in and close walls around the structure.”

The memo adds that John Walsh “did not appear at all optimistic about getting the money — as he has before – he sounded almost desperate when he was on about the framework.”

Yet, the bell frame was erected.

Master Mason and tower construction supervisor Stephen Boyle was on the tower in September 1988 when the bell frame was assembled. He speculates, “I think it was a ‘now or never’ call, hoping the money for the bells would materialize later. It would also have much been harder to build the rest of the frame once the stone tower walls had risen further.” 

Construction continued on the tower for a few more seasons and the limestone rose to cover most of the steel frame, but work ended before the frame was completely walled in and a roof added above.  Around 2007, after years of inactivity, the rusting scaffolding and the upright beams of the bell frame were removed. 

Additional information provided by John Taylor and Co. confirms that the bell frame erected on the southwest tower was the company’s design for a carillon. They did not manufacture this frame—they believe their design drawings were sent to a U.S. firm that manufactured the frame locally to Taylor’s specifications.

John Taylor and Co. also stated that the plan for the two towers was for the change ringing peal to go in the southwest tower, then under construction, and the carillon to go in the northwest tower.  

This turned out to be the reverse of what actually happened, as John Walsh may have felt his best option was to erect the bell frame for the carillon in the southwest tower. 

While no bells were ever ordered, Cathedral docent Tom Fedorek recalls, “During my first years as a cathedral guide in the 80s, visitors would ask if there would ever be real bells. One of my fellow guides told me that the bells had already been manufactured and were sitting in a warehouse in the Netherlands pending completion of the tower.” Wishful thinking or an urban legend.

Anyone walking near the Cathedral these days will hear bells ringing, but the sound comes from a speaker mounted on the southwest tower. Douglass Hunt, the Cathedral organ curator, explained, “The Cathedral’s bells are a Schulmerich Carillon. It is a digital instrument — the bell sounds were sampled from cast bells and are digitally generated by the carillon’s electronics. Not a recording per se, but rather a digital tone generator system.

“We have always kept the instrument to playing clock functions (hourly rings), as well as calls to worship for Sunday and other major services. On a rare occasion, I’ve been asked to program a toll (for a solemn occasion) or a peal (for a joyous one),” he continued.

“It was once said to me that the installation of an electronic carillon had been done years ago as a way of getting the sound of bells into the neighborhood atmosphere, in preparation for the completion of the west facade and towers.”

Aside from bells proposed for the tower, Stephen Boyle points to blueprints that indicate a few unusual items. Plans included an elevator running on the exterior of the tower’s east side with a narrow entry to the tower base. A small tapered passageway inside the tower leads to a blank wall that would have been opened to accommodate an elevator. This lift would save the bell ringers and /or carilloneurs the steep climb up a spiral staircase to the floor of the tower and allow visitors to the belfry. 

There are also four corbels in the tower carved in the likeness of several major supporters and benefactors, looking down from near the top of the chamber’s ceiling. A corbel is a bracket that projects from within a wall to support a weight, although these four corbels might have been purely decorative. 

One such corbel honors The Rev. Dr. Robert Ray Parks, Rector of Trinity Church. Rev. Parks was a member of the Cathedral Board of Trustees and the Chairman of the Fabric Committee when tower construction was under way. Rev. Parks stood atop the tower in 1982 for the dedication ceremony and saw Philippe Petit cross Amsterdam Avenue on a high wire.

Today, the bell chamber sits as quiet as a catacomb; the only sounds piercing the stillness are the rumbling of buses and ambulances on Amsterdam Avenue below. 

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Sources:

• Special thanks to John Taylor and Co. Archives and Tim Barnes at Trinity Chuch
• Riverside Church
• Andrew Dolkhart – Morningside Heights
• American Bell Festival
• Cathedral of St. John the Divine archives
• Cathedral Newsletter
• Schulmerich Carillons
• Cathedral Docent Thomas Fedorek
• Central Council of Church Bell Ringers
• New York Magazine, May 26, 1980

List of carillons in the United States – Wikipedia

Yale Guild of Carillonneurs

(This is Part 1 of a two part story about the bells by Divine Stone co-author Robert F. Rodriguez)

This is a story of “what if”… “what should have happened”… “what didn’t happen.” 

The bell chamber in the unfinished southwest tower of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is dark and eerily quiet. Limestone blocks and red bricks form the walls, punctuated with soft light filtering through several louvre grates. Above, a series of heavy steel I-beams span all sides of the tower, and above that, a corrugated roof keeps out the elements.

The visible steel beams are from the base of a bell frame, which would have…could have… supported a number of harmonious ringing bells, breaking the silence in the tomb-like lower level of the tower.

Plans for at least a dozen bells and perhaps more than 50 date back almost a century.

Correspondence between Cathedral officials and bell foundry John Taylor and Co. tells the story of the numerous proposals and various configurations of bells for the towers. These historic letters and other documents from the company’s archives were recently shared with me.  

Let’s go back a century to put the timeline and narrative in order.

In 1925, the project to complete the Cathedral was coming together. Under Bishop William T. Manning, major work on the Cathedral had resumed that year. A young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, less than a decade from the White House, spearheaded a $15,000,000 capital campaign to revive construction, which later included enough additional money to build the west façade, and possibly the towers. 

Architect Ralph Adams Cram, who oversaw the transformation of the Romanesque style of architects Heins and LaFarge to a more traditional English/French Gothic design, had plans in place. The foundation for the nave was finally prepared. The central crossing and chapels to the east looked like a stubby domed box sitting atop a carpet of concrete – waiting for construction of the nave to start. 

News of resuming the project at the Cathedral reached across the Atlantic Ocean and in 1926, the Cathedral architect received a letter from John Taylor and Co. in Loughborough, UK. The company dates back to 1839 and today is the last remaining bell foundry in England.

Having installed 10 bells at Yale University’s Harkness Tower a few years prior, John Taylor and Co. was doing well with new orders from the United States. In that light, the company sent a May 12, 1926 letter to Cathedral architect Ralph Adams Cram. The sales pitch proposes: “ I suppose the West towers will some day be completed, and if I may make a suggestion at this very early stage, then I recommend that the grandest ringing peal in the world should be placed in one tower, and a carillon in the other, the pièce de résistance being of course the ringing peal. The ringing peal must then possess a grandeur unparalleled by any other in existence.”

“What is advisable for St. John the Divine?” the effusive letter posed. “I suggest and recommend a ringing peal of twelve, with the tenor weighing not less than 100-cwts.”  

Bell weights are often expressed in hundredweights (cwt.), quarters (qtr.), and pounds (lbs.). 

The National Bell Festival website explains that the tenor bell is the heaviest bell within a change ringing peal or carillon or chime. Consequently, it sounds the lowest tone or note of the instrument. 

IF…the bells for the Cathedral had been cast, Tim Barnes, the Ringing Master at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, notes that the tenor bell would have been “the largest in the world for a change ringing peal, coming in at 11,200 lbs. or 5 tons. “It was the Roaring 20s,” Barnes continues, “and apparently nothing was too ambitious!”

Taylor and Co. had experience with transporting these behemoth bells. To move the 16.7 ton “Great Paul” Bourdon bell from the foundry in Loughborough to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the company first considered using a team of elephants but decided upon a more practical custom-built steam powered trolley.

The price quoted for the Cathedral’s ringing peal was $53,520 – with free delivery!

Tim Barnes contacted Taylor & Co. for an updated price and, a century later, the cost estimate would be about £495,000 or $650,000 for a new ring of 12 change ringing bells. The change ringing bells, or a peal of bells, swing full-circle, as opposed to being in a fixed position, and are used for change ringing – sounding the bells by pulling on ropes 

In the 2025 estimate from John Taylor and Co., the size of the tenor would be reduced from the original 100 cwt. to about 40 cwt. — 4,480 pounds or 2 tons.

For comparison, the current tenor bell at the Washington National Cathedral weighs 32 cwt. (3,584 lbs. or 1.6 tons) and the Trinity Church tenor weighs 24 cwt. (2,688 pounds or 1.2 tons.)

The National Bell Festival explains, “change ringing bells are mounted on wheels (secured by a cradle) in a room directly above the ringers. The change ringing bells begin their swing from a mouth-upward position and rotate full circle before reaching the balance point and then, by the pulling of a rope by the ringer, swing back in the opposite direction. The sequence of which bell to ring comes under the direction of the ringing master and there are thousands of variations possible.”

Tim Barnes adds, “Change ringing involves a set number of bells (usually 6, 8, 10 or 12 bells), numbered from the highest note to the lowest note” and each bell rings once, as part of a predetermined ordering of the bells (the peal of bells), before any of the bells ring again. Patterns known as ‘methods’ are rung and these methods generate different permutations (i.e. orderings) of the bells. 

A recent visit to the Trinity Church tower helped me to understand the bell ringing process. After a 99-step climb to the base of the belfry, a group of “ringers” gathered for an evening practice.

Trinity has a “ring” of 12 and the bells came from John Taylor and Co.

Click the link Ringing at Trinity Church, Wall Street, NYC on Vimeo to hear a ringing peal of bells – change ringing bells.

IF…the bells for the Cathedral were cast, the ringing peal would have been only the second in New York City. Today, Trinity Church has the city’s only change ringing or ringing peal installation.

John Taylor and Co.’s four-page 1926 letter to Ralph Adams Cram goes on to detail the proposal for a carillon of 56 bells for the other tower: “In view of the extreme importance of the building I recommend as ideal a Carillon of fifty-six bells. The cost of the carillon would be $250,040.” (Also with free delivery). Remember, this is in 1926 dollars. Tim Barnes contacted  the bell foundry and the cost of the carillon today would be around $2,000,000.

The letter did not specify which tower would house the peal of bells or the carillon.

The 56 bells proposed would have been larger than Yale University’s 54-bell carillon, also cast by John Taylor and Co. 

How does a carillon work? The National Bell Festival explains: “A carillon is a musical instrument of bells, consisting of at least 23 harmonically-tuned bells. The cup-shaped bells are hung fixed in a frame – “dead” rather than “swinging”. Seated in an enclosed space within the tower, a carillonneur then operates a console – a clavier – with batons (for the hands) and pedals (for the feet).The bell clappers are connected by means of wires and a tracker system to the “baton clavier” that enables the player to control both the rhythm and dynamics of playing. The deeper notes are sounded by means of foot pedals similar to those on an organ. 

Hear the carillon at Riverside Church – The ringing of the Riverside Church carillon

IF…the proposed bells had been cast, the Cathedral’s carillon would have rivaled that of neighboring Riverside Church. Built in 1930, the Riverside Church carillon was a gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in memory of his mother. The world’s largest carillon by weight, the Riverside array contains 74 bronze bells primarily cast by the Gillett & Johnston bell foundry in the UK.  The Bourdon bell at Riverside, weighing over 40,000 pounds — 20 tons — is the second largest tuned bell in the world.

Hear the Bourdon Bell at Riverside Church (16) Video | Facebook

Riverside Church was completed in just over three years, at the same time as the Cathedral was constructing the nave. A Cathedral fundraising brochure states: “Even the Great Depression did little to dampen the spirit of civic pride engendered by the building of the Cathedral. Then as now, the building of the edifice was to give heart to a depressed city and provide work for those seeking jobs.”

The Second World War brought the Cathedral’s building phase to an abrupt halt, with no work started on the west towers. The dedication of the nave took place seven days before the U.S. entry into the war. 

Photographs from that period show a boxy metal frame rising on the west façade tower bases and spanning the pointed roof of the completed nave – probably used for lifting stones and other materials to the upper reaches of the building. 

Aside from the initial 1926 letter from John Taylor and Co. to Ralph Adams Cram, no other correspondence was uncovered from the bell foundry’s archive concerning this construction phase. It could be that Bishop Manning needed to focus his attention on building the nave, transepts, the narthex, west façade and tower bases before he could turn his attention to specifications for bells.

After the Second World War, there was a brief attempt at fundraising to resume construction but money was more urgently needed on numerous rebuilding programs throughout the Episcopal diocese. In addition, Bishop Manning retired at the end of 1946 and his successor, Bishop Charles Gilbert, felt that continuing to spend large sums on the construction of a grand edifice while poverty increased in the surrounding neighborhoods was inconsistent with Christian charity and faith, according to Andrew Dolkart in his book Morningside Heights.

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