The Campanile on a snow covered central campus. Clock shows 3:10. A conifer in the left near foreground and a leafless tree on image right frame the Campanile. There are surface stains on the photograph. One of a set of three photographs of The Campanile, each showing the same aspect of the tower but varying in location of the camera. The other photographs in the set are: 4-8-I.Campanile.230-7-4-2 and 4-8-I.Campanile.230-7-4-3.
Throughout the twentieth century the Bells of Iowa State have sounded across the campus. The first bells were placed in the Campanile in 1899. Since then they have become an outstanding tradition of the University as well as a unique symbol remembered pleasantly by alumni and campus visitors. This is exactly as their donor, Edgar W. Stanton, wished. Stanton graduated with the first class at Iowa State in 1872. He spent 50 years on campus as a student and faculty member, becoming the Head of the Department of Mathematics, secretary to the Board of Trustees, dean of the junior college, vice-president, and on four different occasions, acting President. His first wife was Margaret MacDonald Stanton, first dean of women. When she died, July 25, 1895, she had been closely identified with the University for almost twenty-five years. Stanton wanted to establish a monument so all students and friends of Iowa State would remember her. He finally decided to purchase and have installed a chime of 10 bells in a detached tower on central campus. President William M. Beardshear helped him choose the site, and the state legislature appropriated $7, 500 for the construction of the tower and its clock. According to H. Summerfield Day's The Iowa State University Campus and Its Buildings, 1859-1979 (1980), construction began in 1897 and was completed in 1898. The contractor was J.F. Atkinson and the architect was George E. Hallett. The final cost was $6,510.20 and the Campanile stood 110 feet tall and its main shaft was 16 feet square. Stanton died September 12, 1920, and his will provided that after certain bequests were taken out, the residue of his estate should be turned over to the University for furnishing a memorial to him. His second wife, Julia Wentch Stanton, and the children, decided to request that the University install 26 additional bells, thus forming a musical instrument which became known as the Edgar W. and Margaret MacDonald Stanton Memorial Carillon. In 1954, the trustees of the Stanton Memorial Trust joined with others to create the Stanton Memorial Carillon Foundation to further the advancement of the carillon at Iowa State. One of the first acts of the Foundation was to purchase 13 additional treble bells, along with a new keyboard large enough to accommodate a 53-bell carillon. They were installed in 1956, brining the total number of bells in 49. In 1967, a fiftieth bell was added.
