The History and Disposition of Ludington's "City Hall Bell"

[XLFD]

Five days ago a post was put up on Vanished Ludington concerning the current whereabouts of a device that for several decades alerted the public and the local volunteers in the fire department of fires.  This device was not the much-loved siren that sat perched atop the fire barn until that building was torn down a little over five years ago, moved to Copeyon Park, and then finally silenced amid public outcry by many nostalgists after a lawsuit was filed.  

No, the device in question was a bell that served as the city's main fire alerting system over most of the first half of the City of Ludington's existence.  The VL post had a newspaper article (reproduced further in this article) about the removal of a notable bell out of city hall and asked a simple question:  "The Ludington Daily News, September 28, 1948 reported on the need to remove the city hall's bell tower. Over the next few decades it appears the bell was in storage at the municipal building. Where is it today?"

The 12,000 members of Vanished Ludington, presumably many who care about and know a lot about the history of Ludington, browsed over this article with only four responding.  Nobody had an answer.  The Ludington Torch had a couple of hunches and did a little research, and we believe we have found the famous "city hall bell".  Let's establish some of the history behind this special bell first.

The first fire house was established around the same time the city was (1873) and located on the corner of Rath Avenue and Court Street.  It housed a two-wheeled hose cart, a hand fire engine and a hook and ladder truck.  Like most fire departments of the time, they relied on a bell rung multiple times to alert them to the occurrence of a fire.

On Saturday June 11, 1881, Ludington experienced a warm and windy morning. At 11:30 a.m., a circus parade was making its way through town. Most of the town's citizens as well as many of its firefighters had turned to watch the parade. A small wisp of flames appeared on West Loomis Street. The fire spread quickly to a saloon, a meat market, then a shoe store. Due to a crack in the cities' fire warning bell, the sound did not carry very far and firefighters were slow to answer the call. Mills, factories, and shops closed with their workers rushing to help fight the fire that was now growing into a major conflagration. Even the circus performers joined in to help try to save the city, but it was all to no avail. By the end of the day, 67 buildings including the fire station had burned to the ground. This accounted for an almost total destruction of Ludington's downtown area. 

The cracked bell was replaced by 1883, and the massive fire inspired reforms in the local water supply systems and fire department.  Advancements in bell-making technology seems to have helped the new bell as it sat atop the city hall for the next 65 years.  In the Sept. 28, 1948 edition of the LDN, the bell made the news when it was removed from Ludington City Hall due to safety concerns.  The city hall, then on the corner of Rath and Loomis, was razed the following year and moved over to where the condos at One Ludington Place is now:

The city hall bell did not retire into some museum, over the next few years some people and organizations approached the city in order to gain it for themselves.  In the August 2, 1954 meeting minutes of the Ludington City Council we see that an offer of $600 (over $7000 in 2024 adjusted for inflation) was made for the bell, which was no longer used for alerting the fire service:

While there is no indication in succeeding minutes that the bell was sold at this point, 11 years after this offer it seemed the City still had the bell and still entertained offers for its sale.  In the January 4, 1965 meeting minutes of the Ludington City Council, a local church from Oceana County expresses interest in the 'city hall bell'

The council never discussed the issue at that meeting or could we find any further discussion about the disposition of the city hall bell since that time.  The sources indicate that during the time it was taken down from the belfry in 1948, it hadn't been used for the purpose of alerting folks to a fire call.  Bells would at some point before 1970 be replaced with that aforementioned siren located at the LFD's downtown location, a department which would move to a repurposed warehouse at 210 West Loomis, on the corner of Robert Street in the late 1970s.  Alert boxes and pagers would develop during this period as well.

We checked in with the secretary and pastors of the Lady of Fatima Church located currently in Hart, and they indicated their current church did not have a bell or a tower, just electronic bells; nobody, not even the elders, were aware of what could have been a church purchase six decades prior.  

Having served at the fire department at Loomis, I remember us having a bell outside of the front entrance that was more ornamental than utilizable and didn't seem to be displayed in a way that a fire alert bell used for up to seven decades should be.  Was this humble, imperfect ringer the famed bell that graced city hall for the first half of Ludington's existence?  

That bell was tracked over to the new fire station on the north side of town off Tinkham, but none of the resources I had access to could identify whether this bell was the actual one used by Ludington over the course of more than 40% of the city's existence.  Nor were there any plaques or other telltale engravings on the displayed bell, which still pealed when you tapped on it.  It appears as if it has been recently refurbished along with its frame.

But there was a good clue to suggest that this particular bell and its display were originally produced in the late 1800s.  The red frame indicates that this was a "Bessemer Fire Alert" bell.  The Bessemer Process, which became the best way to produce iron items during the latter half of the 1800s, brought this Englishman's name to the forefront in mass production of steel items like bells.  Patented in 1856, the process sped up the creation of formed steel significantly and came to America steel mills right after the Civil War in 1865, ushering in the railroad era.  

By 1900, making steel using the Bessemer process was mostly unheard of in the country of its origin, replaced by the open hearth process.  This suggests that the fire alert bells using the Bessemer trade name would have been produced commercially and available at the time (1883) when it came time to replace Ludington's cracked bell, but not long thereafter.  

It appears then that this is the 'vanished' city hall bell of Ludington, rousting volunteer firefighters out of bed for seven decades.