The HOWE CHIMES, a brief history

The chimes came to Amherst as a result of a search to find "an appropriate memorial to the Amherst men fallen in the (Civil) War." George Howe offered the chimes for the new church "in honor and commemoration of the members and graduates of this College who gave their lives for their country." Howe had lost his son Sidney Walker Howe, '59, to the war at the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862. The chimes were first played at the semi-centennial celebration in 1871. President William A Stearns declared the chimes had "the double purpose of throwing out upon the breezes the sweet invitation of Christian psalmody to worship on the Lord's day and of the commemorating in patriotic an soothing melodies on appropriate occasions the nobleness of our sons and brothers who honored the College, while they shed their blood for Christ and the native land." President Stearns also lost his son, Frazar Augustus Stearns '63, to the War.

Eventually religious services were moved into the newly renovated Johnson Chapel and finally the Stearns Church was unused. In 1936 Mead set up a trust fund for construction of an art museum and in 1949 Stearns church was razed to make way for the Museum. The architects of the museum were indifferent as to whether the steeple should also be demolished and the question of its fate fell to the Board. Fortunately the Board, by the slim margin of one vote, elected to keep it.

The chimes were played everyday before chapel services at 8:50. A student was paid to perform this service for a year and tapped a fraternity brother to be ringer for the following year. The last tap occurred in 1964.

After 1965 the bells were played by members of the Music faculty from time to time for few more years then fell into disuse and, finally, disrepair. The Steeple itself suffered structural damage from its age and, when the chimes were rediscovered in 1989, it seemed likely the vibrations from playing the bells could topple the steeple itself.

In 1994 Stearns Steeple underwent extensive structural repairs. The scaffolding that supported the structural work was an ideal platform to restore the chimes from. The clavier, the "key board", was moved down a level so that the player would be a comfortable distance from the very loud bells. The cables, connecting the wheelbarrow handle sized keys to the bells, were all replaced. Many of the pivots, that translated the downward pull of the key on the cable to the sideways pull on the clapper to ring the bell, had rusted into place and needed to be disassembled, burnished, lubricated and reassembled. Two pivots had to be completely replaced.

The chimes span one octave and are tuned in the key of E (E,F#,G#,A,B,C#,D#,E) with an added D natural to allow tunes to be played in the key of A.