As the recorder and custodian of our nation’s campanological heritage, we’re always delighted to come across an intriguing artifact from history that demands further investigation. Well, dear reader, this is one of those occasions and the National Bell Festival could use your sleuthing assistance in bringing closure to a mystery!
Our story begins with a jaunt across Washington, D.C. to the Library of Congress, the United States' oldest federal cultural institution and home to approximately 173 million items across more than 470 languages. Among the many troves of research materials, a single photograph caught our eye.
Titled “Workers in the White House gardens still cling to the old custom of going to work by the ringing of a huge bell,” the black-and-white photograph is dated Sept. 12, 1922, and depicts a man sitting on a windowsill, leaning out to ring a bell by grasping a rope.
Image: Historical photograph titled: “Workers in the White House gardens still cling to the old custom of going to work by the ringing of a huge bell.” Dated: Sept. 12, 1922. Courtesy: Library of Congress.
Image: A second historical photograph with a wider field of view depicts the bell ringer smiling at the camera while perched in the window of a building. Dated: Sept. 12, 1922. Courtesy: Library of Congress.
While this image depicts a milieu that would be common enough in towns across America, what intrigued us most about this photograph was its given location: the White House. To be sure, the board-and-batten structure depicted in the image is demonstrably not the White House. But could it have been a small house or building within the wider executive complex?
To the White House!
To find out, we sought out the authority on all things White House: the White House Historical Association (WHHA). Stewart McLaurin, WHHA President, connected us with Matthew Costello – the WHHA Chief Education Officer; the Marlyne Sexton Chair in White House History; and the Director of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History. Talk about a man who knows a thing or two about the Executive Mansion!
While the structure wasn’t immediately recognizable to his well-informed eye, he hit upon two clippings in newspapers of the time. The accounts claim that the bell in question was earlier employed at construction sites throughout Washington, D.C., first at the Washington Monument, then the Library of Congress, and then the State, War, and Navy Building (now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on 17th St. Northwest).
Image: Clipping of The Washington Herald newspaper from Sept. 13, 1922, titled “Old Bell Calls Workers at Propagating Gardens.” Courtesy: Newspapers.com and the White House Historical Association.
Image: Clipping of The Evening Star newspaper from Sept. 11, 1922, titled “Around the Town.” Courtesy: Newspapers.com and the White House Historical Association.
The bell was then given a permanent home at the administration building of the Propagating Gardens, which grew flowers and plants for the White House. We’re to thank a Superintendent Byrnes for the bell’s preservation, who in earlier days was in command of the Propagating Gardens and who, by the time of the 1922 accounts, had taken charge of the greenhouses at the Dept. of Agriculture.
The Propagating Gardens’ bell rang four times a day to announce the beginning and ending of work: starting the day at 7:30am, breaking for lunch at noon and resuming work at 12:30pm, and finally calling it quits at 4:00pm. Who rang the bell? For at least 12 years, the post of official bell ringer fell to James A. Watts, the man depicted in the photograph at hand.
Roping in the National Park Service
Finally we had a name and a location, but what happened to the bell after 1922? Did it still exist? Might it yet reside in Washington, D.C., relegated to the dusty storehouses of some government department?
To corroborate the story and help address these lingering questions, our WHHA guide brought in David Krause, archivist at the Office of the National Park Service and liaison to the White House, for more insight. He considers it likely that the bell was relocated to the Propagating Gardens at the White House as early as the 1880s after work was completed on the State, War, and Navy Building, immediately adjacent to the White House grounds.
The Washington Herald’s mention of moving the Propagating Gardens, Mr. Krause mused, was likely in reference to the 1902 Theodore Roosevelt renovation, which saw the demolition of the White House greenhouses and conservatory to make way for the new Temporary Executive Office Building (now the West Wing).
The bell moved with the gardens to a new location “west of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing” and near the Washington Monument, though tucked out of site. When the bell was photographed here in 1922, 20 years on from the relocation, it had become legend for the bell to be equated with the White House, and an easy mistake for editors archiving the historical image.
Image: A 1901 map depicts the proposed development of propagating gardens, greenhouses, and a nursery in Washington, D.C., south of the Washington Monument and west of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The administration building, labeled “Office for the Gardens” is depicted in the lower center of the map, directly facing the Washington Monument (not shown). The map accompanied the annual report prepared by Theo. A. Bingham who, from 1897 to 1903, was in charge of public buildings and grounds in the nation’s capital under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of Public Buildings and Grounds. Courtesy: Library of Congress.
An acquisition!
Then, another clue surfaced. We at the National Bell Festival pride ourselves on leaving no stone unturned when researching our nation’s bell heritage. With serendipitous timing, a seller on eBay listed an original press photo from 1922 (the kind a syndicated photographer would send out to multiple publishers in hopes of getting their work in print). In the name of research, we placed a bid.
The photograph arrived a few days later, showing the familiar smile of James A. Watts beaming out from the open window. But more intriguing was the inscription on the photograph’s reverse. It reads, in full:
BELL CALLS PRESIDENT’S GARDENERS TO WORK
In the heart of Washington hangs this old-fashioned bell, not unlike the one that used to hang from the “little red school house”. It is located in the “Propagating Gardens” where all the flowers and plants for the White House and White House gardens are grown. The men employed there are known as the President’s own gardeners. The bell, which hangs from the administration building is rung at 7:30 a.m., 12m., 12:30 p.m., and 4 p.m. by James A. Watts, who has held the post of official bell ringer for twelve years. The bell originally hung in the State, War and Navy Building.
It's easy to see how a hurried editor might read this extract and interpret the location of the Propagating Gardens to be at the White House, so surely this bell must be at the White House, too. The press ran with the story, the image was labeled and catalogued incorrectly, and a century on, it falls on us to put the pieces together.
Image: Reverse of the 1922 press photo archived by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, now in the collection of the National Bell Festival, offering clues to how the image was mislabeled and incorrectly catalogued as showing a bell “at the White House.”
Where is the bell now?
Does this image depict a bell at the White House? No. Rather, it’s a bell pictured across the National Mall at the long-gone administration building of the Propagating Gardens, which had moved a couple decades earlier from the executive complex.
It’s here where the history goes cold. We lose track of the bell’s story after this photograph was taken, but we’re not giving up hope that more insight into this enigmatic bell is out there! Perhaps a photograph might surface showing one of the construction sites where the bell earlier gave service, or an image of the full Propagating Gardens’ administration building, or even a document detailing where the bell was sent when these buildings, too, were demolished. Could elements of these gardens have survived?
We want to know! If you have something to share, help us tell this bell’s story by sending us a note! Together, we can keep our history ringing.
Cover image: Detail of a photograph dated Sept. 12, 1922, of bell ringer James A. Watts at the administration building of the Propagating Gardens west of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. Courtesy: Library of Congress.
