Historic bell back atop UW hall

SEATTLE – A 400-pound bell that tolled to mark the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, and alerted locals to the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, is back on top of Denny Hall at the University of Washington.

The cast-iron Denny Bell was removed from its perch nine years ago for restoration. On Saturday, construction workers used a crane to hoist both bell and cupola – totaling 10,000 pounds – back onto the building they’d graced for more than 100 years.

“This is a symbol of the community and the university,” said Brewster Denny, great-grandson of Arthur Denny, one of the founders of Seattle and the university.

Arthur Denny and his wife, Mary, in 1861 donated about 8 acres to help start the university in downtown Seattle. In 1862, the bell was purchased for $368 from an upstate New York foundry and brought to Seattle around the tip of South America, according to a 1995 memoir in Columns, the UW alumni magazine.