Renewing Phillips Church: Final Chapters

Church Bell Is Refurbished

When Clerk of the Works Guy Conrad wasn’t assisting in the assembly of thousands of organ parts last summer, he was overseeing the refurbishment of Phillips Church’s 2000-pound, solid bronze bell, original to the 1897 building. Traditionally, the bell tolls for weddings, funerals and services in Phillips Church, and for the seven minutes leading up to Meditations on Thursdays during term time. The Academy contracted Verdin, a Cincinnati firm, to clean and restore the bell and its working parts and to replace the bell’s damaged wooden support frame with a new, steel one. The bell’s hand-made wooden wheel was also replaced with steel; the original will be restored and housed elsewhere on campus. The bell can now be rung manually by rope, which causes the clapper to strike the refurbished leather pad on the interior of the bell, or remotely by way of a new, automated electronic ringing device, which activates a metal ringer that hits the bell’s outer surface.

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