Metro Nashville Public School Voices: Bransford Avenue Bell

From the Metro Nashville Public Schools:

September 9, 2020

This week’s MNPS Voices is about a different kind of “voice” - the bell outside the district’s central office in Berry Hill.

The bell that sits on the front campus of the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Education’s Administrative Complex at 2601 Bransford Ave. took a long, roundabout journey to get there. It was found under the floor of the original Howard School at 601 Second Ave. South, a building that was used in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a community school – and eventually housed the MNPS Maintenance Department after the school relocated.

On August 18, 2020, the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote. Nashville holds a significant place in this historic event, because in 1920 the Tennessee legislature cast the final vote that was needed for ratification.

Cities across the United States rang bells in celebration a century ago – but Nashville did not. So organizers of the centennial celebration this year decided bells should ring across the city.

Director of Schools Dr. Adrienne Battle and the elected MNPS Board of Education members – all of them women – joined the celebration and rang the bell in front of the central office. As participants accepted invitations to the event, they often asked questions about the bell and its history. The answers to those questions and interesting facts about the bell are presented here.

The all-brass bell was designed and cast in West Troy, N.Y., by two companies in 1908, then transported to Nashville via steamboat and locomotive. With an original tone of B flat, its initial job was to ring alongside its sister in the Howard School bell tower to call and dismiss children to and from school. The bell was also used to alert the community that lived by the Cumberland River.

The Howard School had been converted to a smallpox hospital to care for both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Unfortunately, the building sustained several fires in the decades following the South’s reconstruction, eventually requiring a new school to be built. Somewhere along the way of the rebuilding and renovations, the bell was taken down, stored under the building, and forgotten.

It was years later, when Nashville Fire Department offices and a fire station were under construction there, that the bell was rediscovered and moved to a warehouse on Spence Lane.

MNPS officials deliberated for years on what to do with the bell while it remained stored. They held many conversations on how to resurrect the bell, including the possibility of incorporating it in a new school.

Thankfully, MNPS’s maintenance department was eventually given approval to build a structure for the bell about 25 years ago. The historical memorial, which includes part of the original wood shoulder support tree, remains with the bell and is also on display at the Bransford campus.

MNPS owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Thomas Hatfield, retired director of maintenance and the district’s unofficial historian, who researched and documented the history of the bell. His team also was responsible for keeping the bell in good condition while it awaited its second placement.

This press release was produced by the Metro Nashville Public Schools. The views expressed are the author's own.