SILENT TOWER

It is difficult to imagine Dartmouth without bells, yet in the College's early years a conch shell called students to classes. Eleazar Wheelock bought a bell before coming to Hanover, but the moving men broke it.

In 1790, a bell was hung in the newly completed Dartmouth Hall. The workers earned two quarts of rum. After Dartmouth Hall burned in 1904, Joshua Pierce '05 donated a replacement the one seen in the photo. The rebuilt belfry collapsed in the fire of 1935, but the bell survived. (The New York Times, recognizing the attachment between alumni and bells, ran a special item reporting that the bell was intact.)

The Dartmouth Hall bell has been silent for years; there is no truth to the campus rumor that it rings when the football team wins. Unlike the Baker Tower bells, which are controlled by computer, this one requires a climb to the belfrey.