Mystery bell becomes heart of Lowell city memorial
Device found to be early fire alarm
A Lowell family used this bell as a flowerpot for years.

By Jack Nicas
Globe Correspondent / November 25, 2009

Restored Lowell Bell

In the 1950s, a historic bell sat upside-down in a Lowell yard sprouting flowers, and no one could remember why it was there or where it came from. But when the land was put up for sale in 2004, local historians decided to take on the bell and its history.

Yesterday, the 150-year-old artifact made its debut as the centerpiece of a new city memorial on Central Street, and historians revealed the first chapter of its story.

“It is actually the first fire alarm in Lowell history,’’ said Jack Herlihy, lead researcher on the project. “But we don’t really know when it was retired as a fire device and how it ended up in this gentleman’s lawn.’’

Herlihy traced the bell’s origin to an English foundry. Company records showed a memo from then-Lowell mayor James Cook, thanking the company for casting the bell in 1859 as a replacement for an earlier bell from the company that had cracked.

City records show the bell hung in the Old Market House, which housed Lowell’s first police and fire station. The steel bell (not the typical bronze) was designed to be struck from the outside, and made a powerful, penetrating sound, according to an 1860 pamphlet from the bell maker.

“It had a sharper sound, more useful for an emergency, rather than the more melodious bell sounds for church,’’ said Marie Sweeney, who helped organize the bell’s $5,000 restoration.

Herlihy believes the bell was retired in 1893, when a new fire station was built. But its history is unclear from then until 1923, the year inscribed on the cement base that held it upright as a giant flowerpot.

“We grew up and it was basically an ornament, almost invisible to us as kids,’’ said Warren Draper, who donated the bell after inheriting it with the family home on Jewett Street.

Sweeney said the bell’s new place as public art, hanging in a grassy nook at a downtown intersection, represents the city’s past. “The point is, Lowell had all sorts of bells,’’ she said. “They were a signal to go to work, to go to Mass, and that there was a fire.’’

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

This story appeared in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, November 25, 2009