Finish the [Bell]Tower

04/17/2025

NC State maintenance worker, Bobby Gene Stocks, is seen in the belfry of the NC State Memorial Bell Tower, 1 May 1967.

Stocks is seen preparing to advance the bell tower's clock one hour during North Carolina’s first observance of Daylight Saving Time since WWII. North Carolina began observing DST after the Uniform Time Act of 1966 became federal law. We have practiced it since, but there were bills filed earlier this year that, if passed, would keep our clocks from being fiddled with twice a year.
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NO.67.5.4
From the N&O Negative Collection, State Archives of North Carolina. Photo copyrighted by the News and Observer. Illegal to use without express permission from the N&O.

10/21/2021

10/21/2021

05/14/2021

https://youtu.be/w3qL4eADmJg

In November 2017, Bill Henry, a 1981 graduate of NC State, and his wife, Frances, made a gift to complete the Memorial Belltower — including the installation...

11/11/2020

Thank you.

07/15/2020

The first eighteen bells were delivered the week of June 22nd. Photos provided by SGM Mark Thompson '73. http://www.sunderlinfoundry.com/

06/24/2020

More details later!

02/18/2020

For anyone that saw the NC State Magazine picture of the tablet. The description is wrong and the tablet did have gold leaf which was destroyed by moisture over the years. The architect expected that and advised a heater be installed in the shrine room but it was never done.

Also the tablet has two errors. Besides the accidental inclusion of Jeffers, the name of Summey Cornwell was accidentally omitted.

Artifact Sacred Stone 28" This marble tablet is the soul of the Bell Tower, as it lists the names of students and alumni killed in World War I. It’s made of Yule Marble from Colorado, the same type of marble used in the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arling-ton National Cemetery....

02/18/2020

"A student initiated group called “Finish the [Bell] Tower” was started in 2008 after Matthew Robbins, a graduate student in architecture, discovered the original plans for the tower. Along with Jay Dawkins, the 2009 student body president and 2010 class president, Robbins spearheaded a campaign to raise money and revive the 1941-49 effort to put the intended 55-bell carillon into the Belltower as designed."

The Memorial Belltower has a history that is almost hard to believe. Built to honor the NC State alumni killed in World War I, the 115-foot Legend in Stone has always been missing a final piece: real bells.

06/14/2019

Happy birthday to the US Army!