History of Hulley Tower
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Kaiser Scholarship winner Zachary Kelly, '94, plays the Eloise Chimes |
- Completed in 1934, cost $13,079
- Financed by Dr. Lincoln Hulley, Stetson's president from 1904-34, and his family
- Architect: Curtis M. Lowery, Stetson math and engineering professor
- Contractor: E. Kent Jones, local builder, also built Stover Theatre
- Building type: steel structure, with brick façade, concrete foundation, dressed stone base and belfry, decorative iron grille on the belfry, multi-pane casement windows
- Height: 116 feet, with bells hung from a steel structure 106 feet high
- Carillon: four large and seven smaller rough cast bells, ranging from 575 to 3,000 lbs., named Eloise Chimes for Dr. Hulley's wife, Eloise Mayham Hulley
- Carillon purchased in 1915 from McShane Bell Foundry of Baltimore, with donations from Sunday vesper services at Stetson, first installed in Elizabeth Hall's cupola, then moved to Hulley Tower in 1934
- A Stetson tradition, the bells have been played at different times over the years, most recently at 5 p.m. each day; they are also traditionally played at commencement
- The late Fred R. Kaiser Jr. endowed a scholarship in honor of his wife, Helen J. Kaiser of DeLand, just before his death in 1994, to help the bell ringers, who are usually music students
- First floor contains mausoleum, where Lincoln Hulley was interred in 1934 and Eloise Hulley was interred in 1959
- Second floor, reached by stone stairway, houses the bells' console or "keyboard" 11 handles, each attached to a bell by a system of pulleys, 80-foot wires, and leather straps played by moving the handles down sharply
- An iron ladder with landings every 10 feet leads to the bell balcony 84 feet above where the bells hang above a trap door
- Listed as part of the Stetson University Campus National Historic District
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Original employees of the McShane Bell Foundry, some of whom may have helped construct the Eloise Chimes. Image Courtesy of McShane Bell Foundry. |