[Bell Historians] Riverside, New York

[David Cawley]

"All the ones they could get into the elevator", the late Jim Lawson, formerly Carilloneur at Riverside, told me. "And at the dead of night." 

Taylors did a report in the 1980's, which reveals that sixteen of the G&J bells survived Van Bergen's "massacre", obviously the sixteen largest, including the five "big swingers". As Carl has indicated, some were from the Park Avenue Carillon.

JT&Co were full of praise for the G&J bells and scathing about the Van Bergen bells both from the point of view of tone and the manner of installation. The report notes reveal that Van Bergen had replaced had indeed replaced the top 56 bells with those of his own design and added two more - thus there were 58 Van Bergen bells. These are the ones replaced by WBF in more recent years but installed by others. The sixteen large G&J 1925/30 bells remain, the "big swingers" as installed.

For a graphic and readable account read Jill Johnston's "England's Child", which covers the whole Park Avenue - Riverside Drive - Van Bergen period honestly and objectively. Jim Lawson would have loved it.

DLC

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: George Dawson 
  To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2010 2:09 PM
  Subject: [Bell Historians] Riverside, New York


    

  Can anyone tell me how many of the original G&J bells were replaced by Van Bergen in 1956.

  And no the GCNA site does not tell you!.

  G





             
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ringingworld.co.uk/pipermail/bell-historians/attachments/20100321/5ce80c56/attachment.html>