By Father James Bramlage

Six years passed after the solemn dedication of St. Peter in Chains Cathedral in 1845 before the slender stone spire was finally completed in 1851. But when completed, it was the tallest structure in Cincinnati, reaching 221 feet into the air.

At that time, the city’s skyline was dominated by church steeples, and from them bells rang out for all to hear. They kept everyone aware of the time, day and night, and they summoned the faithful to prayer and to special events of the church community. Church bells were the voice of the city.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETER IN CHAINS

Archbishop Karl Alter consecrates one of the bells in 1957.

Along with the bells, Springer donated a clock to grace the cathedral’s slender steeple and an elaborate mechanism for the automatic ringing of the bells. Both clock and mechanism were imported from Paris, France and installed by the Hanks Company along with the bells. Each quarter-hour was announced by the chiming of three bells, sounded once for the first quarter, twice for the half-hours, three times for the third quarter and four times for the hour followed by the striking of the hour on the largest of the bells.

Archbishop Purcell blessed the new bells on Jan. 11, 1851, and, according to an account of the time, they rang out for the first time on July 4, 1852, at 5 a.m. to announce the Independence Day holiday with a solid hour of "Hail Columbia"!

Every three hours the clock’s mechanism, described as the "largest and most complicated in the city," played one of five tunes, which in addition to familiar sacred songs included "Home Sweet Home."

Scaffolding shrouded the steeple during renovation; it was dismantled and reassembled for the new bells in 1957.

In 1923, Msgr. William Anthony, then the cathedral’s pastor, lamented the fact that the tower clock was broken and the bells silenced. "It is only when we fail to hear them that we realize how much they are a part of the cathedral," he wrote in the monthly bulletin, appropriately titled The Cathedral Chimes. Again, repairs restored their ringing, but in the late 1930s, shortly after the status of cathedral was taken from St. Peter in Chains and bestowed upon St. Monica in Clifton, the bells gave up, perhaps in protest. The sound of bells was not heard again from that old steeple until 1957, when the title of cathedral was once again restored to St. Peter in Chains.

The plan for the restoration of the old cathedral under the leadership of Archbishop Karl J. Alter, not surprisingly, included new bells. A handwritten note in the files of the archdiocesan archives makes mention of the unsuitability of the original bells for reuse. "Must be pitched out," the note readers, "too many overtones." A proposal for a set of 12 new bells included a 40 cents per pound credit for the metal from the old bells, but that credit was never realized. The former pastor of the cathedral who lamented the silence of the bells in 1923, Msgr. Anthony, was then the pastor of St. Teresa Parish and planning a new church. He purchased the bells, and they found a new home in St. Teresa of Avila Church dedicated in 1963.

It was not surprising that Archbishop Alter turned to the I.T. Verdin Company to provide the bells for this restored cathedral. The Cincinnati-based company is the world’s largest supplier of bells, carillons and clocks and had often been called upon to keep the old bells ringing. Twelve new bells, ranging in weight from 147 lbs. to 2,200 lbs., were cast by the Petit & Fritsen Co. in Holland. The largest bell, however, 3,400 lbs., was not new but was retained from the original set cast in 1850. This bell, named St. Peter, was refurbished and reinscribed with the words, Carolus Josephus dedicavit me anno 1954 in honorem Sancti Petri. Its voice would once again be heard from the cathedral spire as it had been for nearly 100 years.

A wooden scaffolding in the unfinished nave of the cathedral held the new bells to be blessed on Feb. 24, 1957.

In preparation for the installation of the new bells, the uppermost portion of the spire had to be rebuilt. The top 20 feet of the 221-foot structure was dismantled and reassembled. In addition, steel beams from which the bells would hang replaced the original wooden ones. The bells were ready for installation in February, 1957. Before being placed in the spire, an elaborate ceremony of blessing took place on Feb. 24. Wooden scaffolding was constructed in the as-yet uncompleted nave of the cathedral from which each bell hung. A contingent of 13 prelates, including the archdiocesan deans, Auxiliary Bishop Clarence Issenmann and Archbishop Alter, assisted by seminarians from Mt. St. Mary Seminary, ceremonially washed and anointed each bell, christening each with the name of one of the apostles and St. Paul.

On the day of the cathedral’s rededication, Nov. 3, 1957, the new bells, along with old St. Peter, pealed out gloriously over the city to announce to one and all that Cincinnati’s cathedral had returned to its downtown location to serve the people of the archdiocese and to be a symbol of the Catholic Church to the city.