Courthouse bell rings again
A sound long silenced is being heard again in downtown Butler. The bell in the Butler County courthouse tower is again sounding on the hour and half-hour.
County Commissioner Kevin Boozel said he has long made it a priority to get the bell ringing again.
He said he brought the bell up in commissioners' meetings, but the time was never right.
John Campbell, the county director of facilities and operations, said the bell ringing was discontinued in the mid-1990s when the residents of the neighboring Historic Lafayette Apartments complained about the noise.
The silence only deepened when the bell's controller got struck by lightning in 2017 and ruined, Boozel said.
The 2,500-pound bell was forged by the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore in 1896. According to an inscription on the bell, it was installed in 1907 during a courthouse expansion that added a third and fourth story and a new roof. The fourth story provides access to the housing for the tower clocks and the bell.
Boozel's priority became a reality this year as county maintenance workers went into the bell chamber above the clocks in the courthouse tower and replaced the motor and adjusted the mechanism that activates the striker that sounds the bell.
“We checked the base,” Campbell said. “It had to be stabilized and braced. One side of the bell was leaning.”
Workers also had to replace the lightning-struck controller on the floor below.
Then, the springs in the striker mechanism had to be adjusted.
Campbell said the bell began ringing out the hour and half-hour on Aug. 10.
The motor that allows the bell to ring continuously still needs to have its chains replaced, he said.
Boozel sees the bell's return as more than a way to count the hours.
“It should represent that Butler is moving in the right direction,” he said.
So far, there have been no complaints from the neighbors.
