Liberty Bell: Where it was Cast and How it was Cracked

Where Did the Liberty Bell Come From?

Cast at London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1751, Pennsylvania’s Provincial Assembly paid 100 Pounds for the bell to hang in its new State House, later renamed Independence Hall.

How Did the Liberty Bell Crack?

The bell made its arrival into Philadelphia in August of 1752, but because the metal was too brittle, the bell cracked during a test ring and had to be recast twice. The final bell weighed 2,080 pounds, measuring in at three feet from lip to crown, with a twelve-foot circumference around its lip.

On July the 8th, 1776, the Liberty Bell was rung in celebration of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, but when the British invaded Philadelphia, the bell was sequestered in a church before its post-war return to the State House.

How the Liberty Bell Got Its Name

The bell, which symbolizes American freedom and independence, would not receive its iconic name until the 1830s, when an abolitionist group chose the Liberty Bell as the symbol of their cause. Conflicting stories about when and how the Liberty Bell cracked, but one story goes that it cracked in 1824, when it was rung during a post-war visit by Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette.

Another story maintains that the year was right, but that the bell cracked when it was used to summon firemen to a fire. A third popular legend claims that the bell cracked during a 1935 funeral for Chief Justice John Marshall, despite a complete lack of journalistic evidence that such a ringing ever occurred.

While the stories of how the bell earned its crack remain conflicted, what can be established is that the bell was visibly cracked when in 1846 the Liberty Bell rang out in celebration of George Washington’s birthday. Despite many attempts at repairing the Liberty Bell, the crack continued to grow with each subsequent ringing, which forced it out of service in 1976, when it was moved to a pavilion near Independence Hall for the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

Where is the Liberty Bell?

As of 2003, the Liberty Bell resides in its new home, in Liberty Bell Center—part of Philadelphia’s Independence National History Park—where the bell is visited annually by over five million tourists.