Liberty Bell

The cracked bell that became an icon of American independence and of liberty worldwide.

The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly ordered the bell in 1752 from the London firm Lester and Pack, later called the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It was cast with the words 'Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof'. In its early years it called lawmakers to meetings and told citizens about public meetings and proclamations.

A bell that cracked and was recast

The city's first bell was brought by the founder William Penn and hung from a tree. In 1751, with a bell tower under construction, the city's leaders asked for a better bell of about 2,000 pounds that could be heard farther. The new bell cracked the first time it was rung after reaching Philadelphia, and local workmen John Pass and John Stow recast it twice. Their last names are on the bell.

How it became a symbol

People did not call it the Liberty Bell at first. In the 1830s anti-slavery groups, called abolitionists, used it as a symbol and gave it that name. It is likely that it was among the Philadelphia bells that rang on July 8, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was first read, but no account of that survives, and links to the American Revolution began only in 1847. Its big crack appeared sometime in the first half of the 19th century. A common story says it cracked after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835.

Traveling and settling down

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the bell was sent to large exhibitions and was damaged further by souvenir hunters. After World War II Philadelphia let the National Park Service take care of it while keeping ownership. It was a symbol of freedom during the Cold War and a place for protests in the 1960s. In 1976 it moved from Independence Hall to a nearby glass pavilion, and in 2003 to the larger Liberty Bell Center. Its picture has appeared on coins and stamps.

On the globe

The model shows the big bell with its crack, in its glass pavilion.