Bellaire High School Clock Tower / Central School Clock Tower and Bell

Bellaire’s public schools had two town clock towers. The first stood atop the old Central School, also called Union School, built in 1871 at the corner of 35th and Guernsey Streets and designed by Bellaire architect J.W. Yost. The school measured 85 by 90 feet, had four floors and a mansard roof, and its fourth floor served as an auditorium and public meeting room beneath the clock tower. A fire in 1887 partially destroyed that tower and destroyed its bell, which bore the names of the school board members when the school was built; the tower was soon reconstructed, and the bell was replaced in 1888. That replacement bell, cast by the McShane Bell Foundry of Baltimore in August 1888, now rings in the Bellaire High School Clock Tower, erected in 1925 as the second town clock mounted on Bellaire’s public schools. Designed by C.W. Bates of Wheeling and built by C.D. Keyser & Co. of Bellaire, the high school tower rises above a school building that stretches 256 feet along 35th Street; the tower stands 40 feet above the third-floor parapet, has clock faces 6 feet 7 inches in diameter, 11-foot columns at the exterior corners of the bell room, and a red-painted dome. Its clock works were made by E. Howard & Co. of Boston, and in 1998 the BHS Alumni Association lighted the tower to honor all “faithful and true-hearted” graduates of the school.

Bellaire, Ohio · United States