A Deeper History of the La Crescenta Elementary School Bell

A couple of years ago I wrote about the resurrection of the big school bell that is mounted in front of La Crescenta Elementary School. It had been hung in the original one room schoolhouse in 1888 and then was transferred to a newer larger school built on the same site in 1915. But in 1948 when the current elementary school was built, again on the same site, the bell was not rehung. Instead it went into storage with a vague promise that it would be hung later on. There it collected dust until the community raised money in 1976 to have it hung in its present location on the school’s front lawn. It is rung now once a year by the graduating sixth graders.

But I found a series of local newspaper articles from 1975 that describe in detail the search for the bell’s origins. The bell was bought in 1887 from the Goulds Manufacturing Company of Seneca Falls, New York. Goulds Manufacturing was a huge foundry operation in Seneca Falls that made a variety of cast iron items, its main product being hand-powered iron water pumps like you see on old farms. (Goulds is still in operation today, still making pumps, but modern electric pumps.) The bells were made as a sideline from foundry leftovers and they made them in an interesting way, according to these old articles. These were “amalgam bells” made with a mixture of metals. As well, hardened iron tools that had been discarded from the other foundry operations, such as worn-out files and saw blades, were thrown into the molten iron that was to be poured into the bell mold. This apparently provided a mixture of softer iron and hardened iron that produced a distinctive tone, as well as making the bells cheaper to produce.

Online I found a scanned copy of the Goulds Manufacturing catalog that the residents of La Crescenta would have ordered their bell from. After looking through about 100 pages of various hand pumps and windmill pumps I finally found one page of large bells. (This truly was a sideline business for Goulds.) Our bell was a Number 8 (33 inch) bell, the largest Goulds offered. With frame, yoke and rope wheel it weighed nearly 700 pounds. The good people of La Crescenta paid a whopping $75 for the bell and another $5 for the clapper. According to the catalog, the bell would have been “gilded,” which we can assume means painted gold.

It most likely would have come by ship around Cape Horn to the Port of Los Angeles, then loaded onto a wagon for the ride on the long dirt road to Los Angeles and then to the Crescenta Valley. It arrived at the newly built schoolhouse in September 1888, just in time for the new classes to start. The 700-pound bell and frame were hoisted up into the bell tower of the school by the wagon driver and his assistant, John and Charley Castillo, along with locals Mr. Bruns and Charles Bathey. Once the bell was set in place, gathered residents took turns ringing the massive new bell for a solid hour, the beautiful tones ringing across the empty valley and echoing against the mountains.

Thereafter the bell was rung each school day morning at 8:40 to gather the kids for the start of class at 9. It also served for a while as a fire alarm bell to summon the valley’s volunteer firefighters. After 28 years of silence (1948 to 1976 when it was stored) it now rings once a year, mid-June, in celebration as the newly graduated sixth graders of La Crescenta Elementary pour out of the auditorium and onto the front lawn to gather around the bell. It was purchased and hung by a forming community in 1888. In 1976 it was rehung by community donations and as an effort to celebrate the bicentennial of the United States. The school bell, like the pretty chimes of St. Luke’s Church, is an audible reminder of our past and of the power and strength of community.

  mike lawler