Donations Spur Restoration of St. Benedict Bell Tower

For more than a year, one of the most recognizable features of the North Center neighborhood was in disrepair, buried for months under scaffolding. This spring, however, St. Benedict Parish and Schools restored its 150-foot bell tower. 

The bell tower fell prey to fickle winter weather the day after Christmas in 2010, said St. Benedict Pastoral Minister Michael O’Malley. A freezing night followed by a sharp rise in temperature caused some of the tower’s decorative masonry to explode, eventually causing it to leak when it rained.

Through donations, and with the help of dollar-for-dollar matching funds from the Archdiocese of Chicago, St. Benedict raised the $1.3 million needed to fix the tower in July, Malave said.

Decades ago, Chicagoans nicknamed the North Center neighborhood St. Ben’s after the well-known church. Today commuters approaching from the west can see the tower from miles away.

“The tower has a very clear function: to call people to prayer,” said St. Benedict Pastor Jason Malave. “That’s why it was built.”

The tower’s bells, which run on an electronic system, ring the hour between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. At the end of the day, they ring a traditional call to evening prayer called the Angelus.

History of the Iconic Tower

The bell tower and the parish have been neighborhood icons for some time. German Catholic immigrants founded St. Benedict in 1901, and they completed the current building and bell tower in 1917.

Like the German immigrants who designed St. Michael church in Old Town and St. Matthias church in Lincoln Square, the founders of St. Benedict’s designed their church in a Romanesque style—one characterized by round arches and large towers.

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The German residents wanted to construct a community center they could be proud of, O’Malley said.

“The church was not just an expression of their faith. It was an expression of their ethnic pride. It was the nexus of their community,” O'Malley explained.

They raised money for the original church by going door-to-door asking local families to “Buy a few bricks for the new building.” The first Mass took place on Feb. 2, 1902.

The congregation moved the first structure a block to the south and laid the cornerstone for the current building in 1916 after the church had grown to about 800 families. Nowadays, 1,790 families attend services at St. Benedict Parish, and 850 children in kindergarten through twelfth grade attend the school. 

Thanks to their donations, the bell tower hides no more. In fact, it is even more noticeable. The parish added lighting to illuminate the faces of the four 6-foot clocks that adorn the tower during its silent hours at night.