Memorial Bell Tower

Towering over the campus of North Carolina State University, the Memorial Belltower stands as a campus icon and a memorial to honor fallen alumni of World War I. Every hour on the hour, and every half hour, the tower emits the sound of bell chimes. Every year multiple events take place at the Belltower.

In August, the concert stage for Packapalooza, a large block party on Hillsborough street that kicks off the beginning of the year, is located at the Belltower; every February the Krispy Kreme Challenge kicks off at the site, and every year, it is lit to recognize and honor our Veterans. The Memorial Belltower stands on the corner of Hillsborough street as a landmark of NC State University; its image is even used on the official university seal. Its roots, however, emerge from the trenches of the First World War.

During World War I, the government of the United States of America issued the Selective Service Act of 1917. The first iteration of the act required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 years old to register for the draft; the second for men who would be twenty-one following June 5, 1917, and the third for men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Approximately 24,000,000 American men registered for the draft during the first World War. The act included male college students in this national call to arms; many alumni and students of NC State University were called into military service, and some did not return. Historians estimate that nearly 53,000 American soldiers died in battle, and approximately 63,000 died of other accidents and even disease. Thirty four NC State students and alumni died in World War 1.

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 added to the death toll of World War 1 as the worst influenza outbreak in human history. The Center for Disease Control estimates that about 500 million people became infected with the virus and that approximately 50 million people died worldwide because of it. In North Carolina alone, over 13,000 people died of the flu. During the Spanish Influenza Outbreak of 1918, the student population of NC State was only 1017, approximately half of the students became infected with the flu that October and thirteen students died in the span of one month. The global demographic disaster of World War I and the following flu outbreak significantly impacted the campus of North Carolina State University.  

Shortly after the end of World War I, Vance Sykes, an alumnus from the NC State Class of 1907, came up with the idea to create a monument to memorialize the fallen alumni, students and faculty of past wars. Sykes sent a letter on October 25, 1918 to E.B. Owen, the alumni secretary at the time, requesting a memorial for their fallen colleagues. By 1920, the alumni group had already created a planning committee for the memorial and hired William Henry Deacy of W.W. Leland Company in New York as the architect.

The original proposed design for the monument was a four-faced clock tower with twelve bell chimes, room at the base for a fountain, and approximately 100 feet tall; it would represent alumni and faculty primarily in the Army and the Navy. During the planning stages, the chairman of the memorial committee contacted different schools that had a clock tower or a bell tower on their campus to understand the process they went through to procure it. The chairmen of the memorial tower committee contacted Iowa State College requesting information on their tower, how it was built, the materials that were used to build it and how they went about the process of hiring the builders, architects and designers.

The committee started the process of building the Memorial Belltower in 1921. Workers added ten foot sections every year from 1924 to 1926 until the committee paused the project due to a decrease in funds, the Great Depression, and eventually the Second World War. With some help from the Works Progress Administration, the tower portion of the Memorial Belltower was completed in 1937. The university class of 1938, along with other student organizations, donated money for the clock and the class of 1939 donated money for some of the lights. The finishing touches were added in the 1940’s and the Memorial Belltower was officially dedicated at a ceremony in 1949, a testament to the persistence of the university community.

The Memorial Belltower is 115 feet tall and it is made of 1400 tons of granite with a concrete base of 700 tons. The tower cost roughly $150,000 when it was originally built and it is based primarily in the architectural style of Gothic verticality. The main doorway has the words “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares” along with a memorial plaque that bears the names of the thirty-four alumni who died in World War I. In the fall of 2019, the Memorial Belltower underwent new construction that included an installation of a 55-bell carillon. 

Today, the Memorial Belltower stands as a symbol of the university and its past. Sometimes the memorial is lit up with red lights. On Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day the tower is lit red in remembrance of those who have fallen and the veterans of the university. When one of the many sports teams triumphs over another team in the ACC, the tower is lit with a glowing red light and sometimes, depending on the game, students meet at the tower to celebrate the win with the team at the cornerstone of college. The university lights the tower red for other special events as well to show that the NC State community is proud of their accomplishments. 

Original Sources References

“1918 Pandemic (H1N1 Virus).” Influenza (Flu). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Ffeatures%2F1918-flu-pandemic%2Findex.html.  

Dorin-Black, Cathy. “To Perpetuate the Names of Heroes.” NCSU Library News, Special Collections, 2018. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/special-collections/to-perpetuate-the-names-of-heroes.

North Carolina State University, Committees, Memorial Tower Committee Records 1919-1966, https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua022_055/

North Carolina State University, Office of Finance and Administration, Office of the University Architect Records 1888-2018, UA003.026, NC State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center, Raleigh, NC, https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua003_026/summary.

“Memorial Belltower” NCSU Projects. https://projects.ncsu.edu/facilities/buildings/tower.html.

“The Memorial Belltower.” NC State University. https://www.ncsu.edu/belltower/.

“When State Got Sick.” NC State Alumni Association. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.alumni.ncsu.edu/s/1209/16/interior.aspx?sid=1209&gid=1001&pgid=6536.

“World War I Draft Registration Cards.” US National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/draft-registration.

“World War One: Casualty and Death Tables.” PBS: The Great War. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/henson/188/WWI_Casualties%20and%20Deaths%20%20PBS.html.

Secondary Source References

Barry, Adam E., Shawn D. Whiteman and Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth. “Student Service Members/Veterans in Higher Education: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 51, no. 1, 2014. https://www-tandfonline-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/doi/abs/10.1515/jsarp-2014-0003.

Kidd, William and Brian Murdoch. Memory and Memorials: The Commemorative Century. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.

Keene, Jennifer D. World War I. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2016.

Kolata, Gina. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

Rudy, Willis. The Campus and a Nation in Crisis: From the American Revolution to Vietnam. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996.