Trumbull commissioners seek repairs to historic Courthouse clocks, bell
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
In March 1895, when the second Trumbull County Courthouse was destroyed in a fire, the county had been home to Warren’s Packard Electric Co. for five years, and the Packard brothers would build their first Packard automobile in Warren four years later, in 1899.
On March 4, 1897, when construction of the current courthouse had nearly been completed at a cost of $140,000, Niles native son William McKinley was being inaugurated as president of the United States.
On Nov. 7, 1896, the new bronze bell for the courthouse arrived. Weighing 1,500 pounds, it was placed in the courthouse dome and was operated by ropes, according to the Warren Daily Chronicle.
“The tone of the clock bell is pleasing and penetrates to be heard throughout the city,” the newspaper reported Dec. 14, 1896.
The four clocks in the dome were also installed that winter. The dome walls went up after the bell and clocks were installed. The clocks began to operate Jan. 25, 1897.
Nearly 120 years later, much about this courthouse has not changed, including the clocks and bell. The clocks still provide the time on the county’s most iconic and prominent structure.
The configuration inside the courthouse has changed, however.
The building was occupied by many more county departments than now, with the sheriff, auditor, prosecutor, law library, commissioners, recorder and treasurer being located there.
Those offices have since moved across High Street to the county administration building, jail and law library building.
The bell remains in the same place, but it doesn’t chime anymore, except when a county maintenance worker pulls back its large hammer and releases its impressive sound either as a private pleasure or to show it to a visitor.
On my tour, maintenance employee Harold Corley was careful to tap it gently.
“If you hit it with a hammer, then you get a really distinguished sound,” Corley said.
He expressed concern, however, that such a sound would startle the occupants of the courthouse, who don’t hear it anymore. The mechanism that used to operate the bell no longer works.
Some of the bell’s history is unknown, such as how long it’s been since it last tolled on a regular schedule, but county maintenance employees say it’s been at least 20 years.
One reason for the uncertainty is that bells can be heard coming from the courthouse hourly during the day, and two longer melodies are played at noon.
But those are generated by a digital carillon, which was purchased a couple decades ago by the Warren Rotary Club. It plays ringing bells, hymns and melodies through eight speakers near the clock and bell tower. It is intended to emulate the sound of a bronze bell.
Leanna Dunaway is daughter of John W. Kurtz, a Warren attorney who founded the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra and Warren Civic Chorus. He died Dec. 10, 2014, at age 88.
Kurtz helped raise the money for the carillon, oversaw installation of it and would use a special keyboard to play Christmas carols on it at noon this time of year, Dunaway said.
He would set up the keyboard on a walkway on the third floor of the courthouse, but it’s been about five years since he last did that, Dunaway said.
Kurtz also went to the courthouse two times per year to change the clocks to correct them when the time changed, Dunaway said.
Recently the county commissioners authorized grant writer Julie Green to apply to the state for $20,000 in capital-budget money to renovate the courthouse clocks and bell. The grant would require the county to pay the remaining $6,820 for the $26,820 project.
Under a proposed contract, the Verdin Co. of Cincinnati would replace the hands and movements on the four courthouse clocks and fabricate and install bell-ringing equipment in the tower. A digital controller would operate the bell on a schedule.
Commissioner Frank Fuda said he gets a lot of calls from people who find it upsetting the courthouse clocks do not keep accurate time.
“I get calls constantly, saying ‘How can you have a clock on the courthouse that doesn’t work?’ We want that fixed as soon as possible,” Fuda said.
Maintenance employee Gary Box said adding the bell repair was a small part of the cost of the total project.
Dunaway, for one, hopes the potential repair to the bell doesn’t mean the end of the carillon. “It’s kind of quaint,” she said of the current tones. “It’s kind of based on my past, but I’d rather hear the carillons than a big, old bell.”