The Old School bell in Cranbury will ring again this Sunday
By: Melissa Morgan
After more than 30 years of silence, the Old School bell in Cranbury will ring again this Sunday.
An audience of devoted Cranbury community members attending this weekend’s Town Hall dedication ceremony at 2 p.m. will listen to the bell’s first performance.
Both the clock and the bell that sits behind it were restored to their original function as part of the renovation of the Old School. The final results will be dedicated after much anticipation.
Committeeman Tom Gambino said the final results look great.
"I looked at the clock about a week ago and it was beautiful," Mr. Gambino said. "It is all polished up and shining. It looks like a jewel up there."
Mr. Gambino said fixing the clock involved working with a very complex gear train and rebuilding many of the teeth. If everything goes as planned, the bell behind the clock will ring and continue to ring every hour.
Cranbury Landmarks Inc. stopped the demolition of the Old School in the 1970s and coordinated the building’s restoration. In 1976, the clock face was rebuilt as part of the renovation, but the bell mechanism couldn’t be repaired because of the cost. The plan to restore the clock and finally allow the bell to ring again began about a year ago.
In the beginning stages of the planning, the Township Committee considered moving the clock and putting it on display in another location, but they ultimately decided to restore the clock and the bell as part of the buildings renovation.
Mr. Gambino said choosing to restore the bell and the clock helped preserve a precious artifact.
"It’s really a wondrous mechanism. It just wouldn’t have done it justice not to ring anymore," he said.
William Bunting, president of Cranbury Landmarks Inc., said keeping the clock and bell as functioning parts of the buildings was the only decision to make.
"The building is a national landmark," he said. "The clock is part of the total building. To remove it is to take away part of the landmark. It wouldn’t be proper in my view to take out any feature that was part of the whole building."
Mr. Bunting also said the bell would lose its significance if it were moved.
"If we moved it, it wouldn’t work anymore," he said. "The bell would become an artifact or an object just to be looked at. It would not be anywhere near authentic."
The bell was made at the McShare Foundry in Baltimore and donated by the drama club in 1897. In 1906, members of the Cranbury High School Alumni Association purchased the E. Howard Clock for the clock tower in the school.
The bell rang on the hour for many years, but has hung silent since about 1967. It began its road to recovery in 1998 when the township bought the Old School building from the Board of Education and received a grant from the New Jersey Historic Trust in the amount of $529,035 for renovations.
When the clock and the bell were added to the restoration efforts, the Cranbury Historic Society stepped in and offered to help fund the project with help from fund raising and contributions from the community.
The society offered contributors a brick from the Old School when they donated to the fund, and, in total, their efforts have raised about $5,000. The project got help from elsewhere in the community.
Dennis West of West Pattern Works in Cranbury did some of the repair work for the bell mechanism and local contractor Mike Kaiser also helped.
"We could have just raised money and hired someone for the whole thing, but we wanted to get the community involved," said Mr. Gambino.
Mr. Gambino said the community will benefit in many ways from their efforts in the restoration. He said that the bell and the school itself serve as an anchor for the community.
"It makes a statement about the things we believe in and value as a community," he said. "It is a symbolic thing for small town life, and it is representative of who we are. We are very proud of it, and we want to do a good job so we can pass it on to future generations."
Betty Wagner, chairwoman for the dedication committee, and township historian, said she heard the bell originally rang to call in farm workers for meals.
"It always had significance to a particular way of life," she said. "That is one more reason we should have it as a commemoration."
This weekend’s activities will end when the bell is rung by former Old School students David W. Cook and Phillip Amend at the same time as the ribbon cutting.
Ms. Wagner said she expects a good turn out for the dedication ceremony.
"We anticipate a lot of participation from our own residents and also people from other towns who attended the school," she said. "People are very nostalgic about it."
Ms. Wagner said final touches were being made to the clock this week.
But, even if the clock isn’t fully functional by Sunday, Mr. Bunting said, community members will be in awe of how the restoration turned out.
"It is all cleaned up and polished with a golden color on parts," raved Mr. Bunting. "It looks like a brand new clock and is a marvelous mechanism worth seeing."
Mr. Bunting also expressed his feelings on the significance the bell and clock will have for the community. He said that not only will they be beautiful to look at, but they will also be symbolic for the town.
"It is a little bit of small town America," Mr. Bunting said. "It is a cohesive element in our community fabric."

