Mystery Solved, Wingate Bell Removal Planned May 3
Contact: Chet Rock, 581-2218; Ron Brown, 581-2674; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO – After 55 years in the cupola atop Fogler Library, the century-old bronze bell from Wingate Hall and the subject of a six-year search, has been removed and will be lowered by crane to the ground on Maine Day, May 3.
Facilities Management hired a professional rigging crew to construct an elaborate winch and trolley system on the library roof last week to get the 700-800-pound bronze bell out of the cupola. Crews moved the bell on a special heavy-equipment cart across and down two levels of roofing to the edge of the library parapet. Roof Systems of Maine in Bangor is scheduled to lower the bell to the ground on the west side of the library Wednesday morning at 10 a.m., with a cadre of administrators from the College of Engineering, UMaine President Robert Kennedy and others observing the event.
Once on the ground, the bell will be wheeled to the Advanced Manufacturing Center, where students are set to continue cleaning the bell, according to Chet Rock, associate dean of the College of Engineering, who has spent the better part of six years trying to discover where the forgotten bell was. Though moved to the library cupola in 1951, today’s university employees had no knowledge of the final location of the bell. Employees who did know have since retired or passed on.
“We’re excited to get it down and finally get it displayed for people to see,” Rock says. “We plan to have it on display for reunion weekend (June 3-4) this summer.”
Removing the bell has been one of the more unusual projects that Ron Brown, project manager with Facilities Management, has seen in the 33 years he has worked at UMaine. He arranged for the cleaning of the bell and sanitizing of the cupola by an asbestos abatement company before work crews could enter it.
The multitude of safety considerations necessary called for unusual planning and preparation, Brown says. They began with the university hiring a company experienced in handling hazardous waste, in this case, a 12-inch layer of pigeon guano that had accumulated under and around the bell in the last 55 years.
Three sets of staging capable of supporting the bell had to be erected on the library roof. On Wednesday, the removal will near completion with the dramatic lowering of the bell from the roof.
“It’s quite a project,” Brown says. “It’s a lot more than people think.”
The bell hung from the time Wingate Hall opened in 1894 until a fire in 1943 at Wingate, the former the home of the College of Technology, now the College of Engineering. The bell had been a signature icon at the University of Maine, the subject of a campus song and object of an unknown number of student pranks.
After fire destroyed the Wingate bell tower, the bell was displayed in front of Oak Hall for a time, but was moved at some point – a point no one remembered until Rock took his detective work the Fogler Library’s Special Collections looking for evidence. He found in the 1953 edition of “The Prism” yearbook a photo of the bell being hoisted atop the library in June of 1951.
Rock and others are now discussing the future of the bell, given its history and significance to the university.
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