oh, bugger

[lagilman]

Anyone who's ever worked down in the WTC area, a question: which church has the loudest or best-sounding chimes on the hour?

I can't believe I forgot to check on that....

Comments

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

I don't remember ever hearing church bells, but I was usually shut up tight in sealed towers with windows that didn't open. Certainly Trinity Church is what you think of first, and so far as I know, it's nearest. And it has a bell tower.

I just Googled to see if the bells are still rung, and apparently the Lord Mayor of London and Archbishop of Canterbury sent a gift of a new bell in 2002:

Measuring almost three feet wide, and weighing 650 pounds, the bell is inscribed with the message, "To the Greater Glory of God, and in Recognition of the Enduring Links between the City of London and the City of New York: Forged in Adversity, 11 September 2001."

Here's what else I found -- just 'cause it's interesting:

Prior to electricity, the bells were sounded by "ringers" who climbed halfway up the tower to a small room one floor below the bells. There they would ring the bells by moving a set of wooden handles attached to leather thongs connected to the bell hammers. In 1946, an American "first" evolved from the fact that it was difficult to get competent ringers and that the public preferred "tunes" to "changes" (rhythmic patterns rung on a mathematical, rather than a melodic basis). In this year, the bells were fixed in one position and electrical connections were made to the clappers. As the New York Herald Tribune reported, "The bells of Trinity Church . . . are now sounded by counterbalance hammers in the first application in the United States of this principle to the ringing of church bells."

In 1985, after years of not chiming on the half hour, the bells were put on a new relay system with rebuilt electric clapper pushes enabling the mechanism to chime every fifteen minutes. More recently, four of the ten bells were detached so they could again swing freely and produce a greater sound. Following a sabbatical for repairs by Elderhorst Bells of Pennsylvania, a new remote switching device now allows the bell melody and tolling to be turned off during a service. With a little more work, Trinity's bells will soon be ringing all the correct melodies at all the right times.

[(Anonymous)]

I"m not sure but I do know this.. when I lived down by WTC, Trinity Church I believe was right across the street from it, but there was a beautiful Christopher Wren church whose name excapes me several blocks further down from it. Not sure if that helps, but figured I'd throw it out there.

[lagilman]

I'm very tempted to use St. Paul's Chapel, purely for emotional reasons, and be damned the accuracy.

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

IIRC, St. Peter's is the church a block or two up from Vesey Street which - I think - rings the bells hourly. I don;t know if the bells were a recording or real bells, though.

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

IIRC, St. Paul's is the one across the street from the WTC site, and Trinity is a few blocks further downtown.