15 February 2011

Strong Place Church Bell Gets Its Close-Up


There doesn't seem to be much in the way of fencing around Cobble Hill's ongoing Strong Place Church condo rebuild these days, so I was able this weekend to walk onto the lawn and right up the wonderful, 158-year-old bell that was rescued from the church's steeple.

As I reported before, this is the church's original bell, forged at the once-world-famous bellmaker Meneely's in West Troy, New York. Below are a few more images of the massive and aged ironwork that once held the bell in its place.





4 comments:

Andy said...

Lovely photos, especially of the iron work that used to support the bell. Very nicely done. Thanks :)

upstate Johnny G said...

Brookster.....have you seen this site? It's been put up by a Meneely family member and is their attempt to start a "Meneely Bell Museum" online. I notice that in the box on the left hand side of the web page it says that for info on specific Meneely bells to contact one Joe Connors @ 518-221-6121.

http://danart.home.mindspring.com/bellsite/html/

On deeper inspection it appears the website owner intends on transferring the info from the site to a newish blog...which is here:

http://bells.danmeneely.com/

The blog looks to have some great info, including a Popular Science article detailing how the Meneely's made their bells, as well as a link to the memoir written by the family patriarch.

Cheers!

Peter o'Nara said...

These three pictures are great. but I wish that I could find more. It would help in a project to remount a similar bell in upstate NY. We want the new mount to be historically correct and are finding it difficult to find information on the mounts of these early bells.

Pete
gohara@nycap.rr.com

xerxes14 said...

Feel free to contact the Burden Iron Works Museum in Troy, NY for more info on Meneely Bells

and ask for:
Jess Brodnax or Tom Carroll

or e-mail: xerxes14@nycmail.com or :

tom@hudsonmohawkgateway.org