In the 67 years of its existence, the John W. Beaumont Memorial Tower has come to mean many things to many people. Located at the center of campus life, it has stood in mute relation to all the activities that have taken place in its benign shadow. As a result, each person who looks at or remembers Beaumont Tower will be aware of slightly different meanings and associations in connection with it, and this has given the tower an unusually personal attraction.
Even more intriguing, however, are the additional meanings that were built into the tower by its designers and planners. These meanings have a way of registering subliminally on our thoughts, affecting our feelings and outlook in ways we may not realize. It is the combination of conscious and unconscious associations which is responsible for the tremendous power and appeal of Beaumont Tower as a campus symbol. With the completion of the tower's restoration, a project approved by the MSU Board of Trustees, it is fitting to examine and appreciate the sources of its enduring charm and influence.
The history of Beaumont Tower is inextricably tied to the history of MSU campus and the evolution of its self-concept. Few people who walk or bike across the broad, green expanses of Campus Circle ever stop to think how strange it is that so large an area of otherwise busy campus should remain relatively undeveloped. It has not remained so by accident. Beaumont Tower, unbeknownst to many, played a major part in the preservation of the Campus Circle as an open area. How did the tower come to be in the spot where it stands today?
Interestingly, Beaumont Tower now stands at what was once the northeast corner of College Hall, not only the first instructional building to be erected on the MSU campus, but the first building in the United States to be devoted entirely to the teaching of scientific agriculture. College Hall was the birthplace of the entire land-grant system. Designed with state-of-the-art features, the new building was intended to facilitate a novel form of education previously unheard of in the sublimely detached colleges of the East--" the application of modern science to the practical business of life." In this unique place, professors and students taught, studied, experimented, and even prayed, using the chemistry lecture room as a makeshift chapel.
Given its extensive use and the wide range of its functions, College Hall soon became an object of great fondness. Those who taught and studied there were keenly aware that they were pioneers in a grand educational experiment. For the first time anywhere in the country, working-class students were being treated with respect and educated with the expectation that they would go on to positions of leadership--in agriculture, in business, in government, and in education. College Hall, then, for many students, was the gateway to a better life.
Accordingly, around the turn of the century, plans were made to renovate College Hall completely and preserve it as a Student Union. Workers, however, were soon dismayed to discover serious structural problems in the building. Renovation was immediately halted and shorings were put in place to hold up weakened sections. Then, on one fateful night in 1918, two walls of College Hall collapsed. The building that had been the birthplace of the land-grant ideal, the heart and soul of MAC, was in ruins. Despite every attempt to save it, the grand old hall was destined to vanish forever from the college landscape.
One former student, however, was determined that College Hall would not vanish from campus memory. John W. Beaumont, who had graduated in 1882 and gone on to become a successful Detroit lawyer, conceived the idea of a monument. What he wanted was not a mere plaque or stone marker, but something that would stand as a fitting tribute to College Hall and to the courageous and dedicated teachers who had worked there to change so many lives. Subsequently, Beaumont, conferring with MSC, the Board of Agriculture, and the Alumni Association, decided on the idea of a tower. As The Agricultural College Record reported, Beaumont hoped that the proposed tower "might take such outward form as to fittingly supplement the charm and beauty of its peaceful setting, that its chime of mellow bells and the sculptured `Sower' over its entrance might perhaps echo in some modest way something of the inspiration that came to him . . . through the lives and words of his teachers."
The sculpture of the sower mentioned by Beaumont was to be a point of particular interest. The Art Deco bas-relief by Lee Lawrie (1922), with its inscription, "Whatsoever a Man Soweth," would pay tribute to those early professors whose faith in humanity had moved them to sow knowledge in what was once thought to be stony ground. It would also serve as an admonition to future educators to teach wisely, and an encouragement to students to pass on what they had learned. The obvious symbolism of the relief, would not only celebrate the college's agricultural roots, but suggest the vital connection between knowledge and survival. We prosper as we teach.
Beaumont Tower, then, was designed to be a monument to teaching. It was also, however, meant to serve as a kind of fortification. Built in the Collegiate Gothic style, the tower not only contained the spiritual elements embodied in the chapel-like base and cathedral-like crown, but the crenelations and lancet windows of a fortress. This combination of spiritual and martial design elements can be attributed partially to a romantic idealism, to the battle against ignorance and social inequality, or to the "muscular Christianity" that then informed all aspects of professional life, including scholarship. In a more literal sense, however, Beaumont Tower really was meant to function as a defensive structure. With the collapse of College Hall in 1918 and the burning of two adjacent dormitories, Campus Circle, now devoid of buildings, became vunerable to new development. An artillery garage was built on the foundations of College Hall, and plans were made to cover Campus Circle with a circle of new buildings. The MSC alumni, wanting to preserve the area as a "sacred space," initiated a "Save the Circle" campaign, and John W. Beaumont presented his plan to replace the artillery garage with a memorial tower. This tower, occupying the highest end of the circle, would dominate the skyline of the north campus and discourage future building in the oldest and most historical sections of the college.
The construction of Beaumont Tower was completed in 1928, and the dedication took place in June of 1929. We are fortunate that the dedicatory words of MSC President Robert S. Shaw were recorded in The Agricultural College Record, for they give us unusual insight into the entire range of the tower's intended functions, from the most mundane to most sublime. They also reveal the intelligence, piety and vision of all those who were involved in its creation.
The first function of Beaumont Tower, according to President Shaw, was entirely practical--its function as a timepiece. "The institution has grown to quite large proportions," he observed, "and this tower, with its chimes will be the one factor on campus that will daily and hourly direct the movements and activities of more than three thousand students and a very large faculty." These movements had originally been directed by the "lone, crude, cast-iron bell...which jingled at the end of each hour," a sound which for Shaw and countless others had great nostalgic appeal. The bells of Beaumont Tower were meant to evoke the memory of this bell, but they were also meant to preserve a campus mood. A campanile, or bell tower, with its mellow and harmonious sound, would be ideally suited to the park-like surroundings and more conducive to the quiet and reflectiveness that are the soul of contemplative life.
The second function of Beaumont Tower, as envisioned by President Shaw, was its likely popularity as a future meeting place. Shaw wanted Beaumont Tower to become "a meeting or trysting place of the students, student groups or organizations, the center of all the activities of this institution." True to his prediction, Beaumont Tower has become just that. The tower itself has become home to Mortar Board and the Tower Guard, undergraduate honor societies whose offices are located inside the tower's mid-section. The area around the tower has also become the chosen spot for countless student gatherings and demonstrations over the years. During the 1960s and early 1970s, there were civil rights and anti-war protests at Beaumont Tower that sometimes involved as many as 4,000 students. In more recent years, as reported by The Lansing State Journal, Beaumont Tower "has been the scene of peaceful confrontations between Jewish and Arab students, anti-rape crusades and demonstrations for and against U.S. policies in Central America." Whether it is some human impulse to gather at the town clock, a desire to tap into the institution's original spirit, or the fact that "all roads lead to Beaumont," radiating out again to all the colleges in the land grant system, people tend to gather there when they have some larger concern--one that transcends the confines of college and department.
This leads us to the third function of Beaumont Tower, as conceived by President Shaw: its role in the promotion of campus unity. With the disappearance of College Hall, the multiplication of majors, and the separation of students and professors into specialized buildings for each academic discipline, the old college spirit and the sense of shared purpose were in danger of being lost entirely. People were becoming compartmentalized and overly preoccupied with their own small corners of the academic landscape. Said President Shaw, "I think we had just come to the point where there was a great need for a unifying factor." Beaumont Tower alone could not be that unifying factor, but standing as it did at the center of the college's divergent activities, it could invite people to contemplate the larger significance of their actions. President Shaw hoped that "the ringing of these chimes with their wonderful melodies and the striking of the hour will be a constant and hourly reminder to the students and staff of this institution that we all belong, not to the `Home Ec division' or the `Ag division' or the `Engineering division,' but to Michigan State College." He hoped that the tolling of the Beaumont Tower bells would encourage teachers, students and staff to think about the relation of their individual activities to the overall mission of the university and to the needs of society--a question that bears even greater contemplation today.
This brings us to the last and most profound function of Beaumont Tower: its role in providing inspiration. Rising as it does so majestically among the ancient oaks, it almost irresistibly draws the eyes and the spirit upward, away from the horizontal and particular and up toward the ideal and eternal. Said President Shaw, "I never come up that walk without raising my chin off my bosom and looking up at the chimes clock. I believe that this tower, those chimes, and that clock are going to act as very great source of inspiration to the students and staff of this institution, appealing to many of the better things in us." Then, as if recalling that this tower that touched the heavens, was also rooted in earth, President Shaw appeared to bring this idea of inspiration down again, back onto the realm of the practical. "I would like," he said, "to have associated with this idea of inspiration the idea of the matter of standards. Inspired to do what? Inspired to advance and to elevate and to live up to higher standards, scholastically, socially, morally, and spiritually in all our affairs. In connection with Michigan State College, I hope that the tower may answer as an inspiration, and that the inspiration may point toward the achievement and the maintenance of these higher standards."
Hearing these words of President Shaw, it becomes clear that Beaumont Tower contains an entire philosophy of the relationship between contemplation and action as they occur in the life every individual. Viewed from the ground up, the message of the tower appears to be this: that every life begins in spirituality (the chapel-like base); that the larger and more mundane middle course of life (in red brick) requires strength, practicality, guardedness, and an attention to time; that the end of life (the crown) invites a return to spirituality, reflection and transcendence. It is for this reason that the one spire that has been called "the finger of God" is noticeably taller than the other three spires. Beyond making the tower more asymmetrical and interesting to the eye, the arrow-like finger gives the entire structure a dramatic upward thrust that is one of its most inspirational features. All three sections of the tower, like the three stages of life, are not meant to be viewed separately, but as integral parts of an existential whole.
Beaumont Tower, then, like all towers of its kind, is meant to suggest, in highly abstract terms, the form and dignity of humanity itself. The lancet windows are the eyes, and the bells are the voice, giving expression to the harmony of the mind. It is for this reason that bells are regarded as hallowed or sacred. Delved from the earth, forged by sweat and ingenuity, and fashioned to produce the harmony of the spheres, bells, like the human mind, are suspended between heaven and earth, a link between the material and the spiritual. It is for this reason that they toll our births, weddings and deaths. They are the embodiment of our mixed natures--the essence of our human condition.
For the first two years of the tower's existence, it contained only ten bells. Three bells were added in 1930, and ten more were added in 1935. Originally placed under the jurisdiction of the Athletic Department, the tower's bells were played by Russell Daubert, a physical education instructor, primarily for the purpose of promoting spirit in MSU's athletes. Because the chiming mechanism used to strike the bells required considerable effort to operate, sensitivity of musical interpretation was nearly impossible. The player had to press vigorously on a series of levers while standing upright. Under these conditions, Daubert was compelled to play simple, one-line melodies with uniform loudness at fairly slow speed, without much use of harmony. The musical capabilities of the instrument were later improved by the addition of more bells and the replacement of the original playing mechanism with a clavier or modern playing console. Daubert, however, lacking training, was unable to play the instrument in the intended fashion: sitting on a bench and using the hand levers and foot pedals simultaneously.
In 1941, jurisdiction over Beaumont Tower and
its bells was transferred from the Athletic Department to the School of Music.
Roy Underwood, who was then music director, approached
Wendell J. Westcott about serving part time as
carillonneur. Westcott had come to MSU in 1931 as a music student majoring
in piano. Underwood knew that Westcott, by then a piano instructor in the
School of Music, had also been performing for five years as organist at
Lansing's Central Methodist church. Not only did Westcott find the carillon
enjoyable to play, he actually found the batons and foot pedals easier to
operate than their counterparts on the organ.
Working with William Davidson of the MSU Development Fund, Westcott supervised the addition of 14 bells to Beaumont Tower in 1950, 6 bells in 1952, and 4 bells in 1957, increasing the range of the carillon to four octaves. On one occasion, during the delivery of the three-ton bass bell, Westcott remembers that the front wheels of the flat-bed truck that carried it actually left the ground for one heart-stopping moment. The installation, fortunately, was otherwise without incident, bringing the total number of bells in Beaumont Tower to 47. The result, for the first time in the tower's history, was a carillon capable of a full range of expression. The lower 27 bells were cast by Gillett and Johnson Bellfounders of Croyden, England, and the upper 20 bells by Petit and Fritsen Bellfounders of AarleRixtel, the Netherlands.
During a sabbatical leave, Westcott studied carillon composition and performance at the Royal Carillon School in Mechlin, Belgium. Upon his return to MSU, Westcott began his career as a carillonneur in earnest. For 40 years (1947-1987), he delighted generations of Spartans with daily performances on the tower's melodious bells. Climbing the 72 steps of Beaumont tower twice a day, Westcott gave 10 to 15-minute concerts at 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday. He also gave 45-minute recitals every sunday. These were simulcast by WKAR Radio, making the Beaumont Tower carillon one of the most frequently played and widely heard instruments of its kind in the country. His appealing mix of classical melodies, folk tunes, pop ballads, and original works soon made Westcott's performances one of MSU's most beloved campus traditions.s
Now a new tradition is about to begin. Margo Halsted has been appointed to the position of visiting university carillonneur. Halsted is university carillonneur, assistant professor at campanology and director of the Sterns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan. For a decade before coming to Michigan in 1987 she was lecturer in music and carillonneur at the University of California, Riverside. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of California, Riverside. In 1981 she earned a diploma from the Netherlands Carillon School.
As a carillon recitalist, Halsted has performed in all parts of the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Denmark and Germany. An expert in early carillon music, she has researched and published articles on two historical manuscripts she discovered in Antwerp. She is currently working on a publishing project that will make some of the oldest carillon music found to date available to a wider public. Five of her carillon compositions have been published. Halsted has been the consultant for seven carillon and chime installations, including the Beaumont Tower restoration project. She was awarded the Berkeley Medal for service to the carillon art from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1995 was presented with a certificate for "exceptional service" by the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. Halsted will perform and teach students on a part-time basis. Persons with a good background in piano who are interested in learning to play the MSU carillon are encouraged to contact her through the MSU School of Music.
The silent bells of Beaumont Tower have been coaxed back to life following a painstaking restoration project that involved specialists on two continents.
The MSU Board of Trustees approved the project last July, more than six decades after the tower's bells first chimed the time across campus. the restoration, undertaken by Royal Eijsbouts Bellfoundry of The Netherlands, involved the carillon, clock, and Westminster chimes, as well as repair of the tower itself. The lower 27 bells have been retained and the upper bells have been replaced by new bells specially designed to match the lower ones in respect to timbre and pitch. In addition there is a new frame, a new transmission, and two new keyboards -- one for tower playing and one for practice.
"The improvements have made the
Beaumont carillon one of the highest-
"It's a long-term investment," says William Latta, assistant director for planning and budgets/facilities planning, who helped plan the project. "This brings the Beaumont Tower structure up to current standards of building reliability and the carillon to full quality."
The carillon has not been used since 1987, when decades of wear and tear on the equipment finally took their toll. Since then, the university has raised money through a variety of sources in an effort to ensure that the restoration was done properly -- and in a way that would last decades more.
Kathrine Neils, special project planner in Engineering Services, said the work was so exacting and specialized that few firms worldwide had the expertise to tackle it. She worked with carillonneur Margo Halsted and with Forger in planning the project and analyzing the proposals. Physical Plant workers did much of the work on the building itself and helped technicians move the bells during the restoration. William Latta, assistant to the director of the Office of Planning and Budgets for facilities planning and space management, also coordinated the project.
There's an entire culture surrounding carillons, and the playing of carillons, that's absolutely fascinating," says Neils, designer of the project. "Beaumont Tower appears on practically everything associated with MSU. It's a beautiful building and now that the carillon is restored, it is whole again."
Authors biography:
Mark Galik is a doctoral student in the MSU Dept. of English, specializing in Renaissance and Restoration literature. He is writer, editor, designer and cartoonist for The Graduate Post, the official newsletter of MSU's Graduate School. His interest in the criticism of physical culture has led him to write essays on the history of MSU's post lanterns and on the philosophical content of MSU's garden landscape. An "inadvertent specialist" in newsletters, Galik has created two previous newsletters at MSU, Spectrum for the College of Arts and Letters, and MSU TA for the Office of International TA Programs. An evocative writer, Galik has studied fictional technique under Maxine Hong Kingston and hopes someday to write a novel about the Hawaiian plantation experience of his Japanese-American ancestors.
