Generations of community members have shaped Dartmouth's sonic identity through the Baker Bells: from the machinist who hacked player pianos to control the clock tower and the professors' wives who hand-punched hundreds of music rolls, to the student composers writing original works for the tower today. Explore the exhibit and consider: how does sound shape your sense of place? What should Dartmouth sound like and who should decide?
The Baker Bell Tower was part of President Ernest Hopkins’s effort to give Dartmouth the look and feel of a European university. Stung by an Oxford student’s remark that Dartmouth had the largest gym and the smallest library of any college in America, in 1926 Hopkins began planning a large library that would transform Wentworth Street into the intellectual center of campus. Hopkins commissioned a 16-bell chime from the Meneely Bell Foundry of Troy, New York.
A crowd gathered on Baker Lawn to watch the installation of the last bells in June 1928 (Colorized). The bells were installed using a pulley system. Workers on the Baker balcony guided the bells through openings where rafters would later be installed.
From right, Fred Longhurst, John M. Poor, and Chester Meneely stand with the bells ahead of their installation. The bells are hung in a similar configuration within the tower.
When Music Professor Maurice Longhurst visited the Meneely Bell Foundry, he requested a method for automating change-ringing—a process in which each bell is rung according to a mathematical pattern—so the bells would sound more like those at Oxford and Cambridge. Meneely’s solution was a first-of-its-kind machine for playing changes. When the Meneely device stopped working around 1932, Walter Durrschmidt, a machinist from the Physics Department, designed a new system for playing the bells using retrofitted player piano equipment.
Dartmouth’s bell operators transcribed hundreds of songs for important occasions to build a sense of sonic community. They set the town’s mood for occasions like births, weddings, and funerals. Students started their own musical traditions and inside jokes, wryly requesting “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” to mark the exam period.
C.J. Ryan ‘08 proposes to Virginia Deaton ‘09 atop the bell tower at Homecoming 2012 as “My Old Kentucky Home” rings.
Olive Carr demonstrates Dartmouth’s custom roll puncher.
For over 40 years Dartmouth's bells played using custom-made player piano rolls. Olive Carr, Krista Jensen, and Frances “Fran” Zeller, all skilled musicians and wives of Dartmouth professors, made hundreds of these rolls from 1943-1979. The bells played roughly thirty times per day, marking hours, seasons, and special occasions. For over fifty years, these women shaped the Hanover soundscape on ordinary days and extraordinary ones.
When Krista Jensen and Fran Zeller retired as bell operators in 1979, local pianist and music teacher Drewry Logan took over. She managed the first group of students to work on the bells, including Paul Grassie ‘80, who designed a new system using the BASIC programming language. This modern solution relieved the rolls and Durrschmidt machine, which were wearing out after more than fifty years of use.
In the 80s and 90s student operators Peter Yoo ’98 (pictured), James von Rittmann ‘95, and Paul Grassie ‘80 —among others—tended to the bells.
Performers and composers from the 2025 Bell Tower Concert pose in front of Baker.
Hearing the Dartmouth bells is usually a passive experience—you walk across the Green and hear them play. Bell tower operator Beccy Abraham GR is changing that. Beccy has commissioned new music from Dartmouth composers that brings human performers into live conversation with the bells. Creative efforts like these are giving the Dartmouth community new ways to experience our unique tower bells.