COVINGTON, Ky. — Covington's iconic bell tower, located in Goebel Park, will soon get some much-needed repairs thanks to federal grant funds from the Community Development Block Grant program.
The bell tower has been an iconic location in Covington since it was completed in 1979. The German-style tower, featuring Gothic architecture, is in need of exterior work and structural repairs.
Work is scheduled to begin in August and will include an extensive list of repairs, including installing new copper gutters, repairing woodwork and fixing cracked mortar joints. After all the repairs are complete, the tower will be pressure washed and waterproofed to help it weather storms for more decades to come.
A future phase of repairs will tackle fixes to the chimes, puppets, glockenspiel and other internal parts. A historic draw of the tower is a set of mechanical figures that enter the balcony at the tower's base when the tower chimes at the top of the hour between April and October. The figures act out the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which has earned it the local nickname "the Pied Piper Tower."
"As you might be able to hear right now, there's some music playing, but when this clock tower was originally built back in 1979, there's puppets that came out, there was the glockenspiel, a whole animation show and more of the chimes were working, so to get all of the internal automations and things to work, it's a substantial investment," said Brandon Holmes, neighborhood services director of Covington.
The tower's true name is the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower, named after former Kentucky governor Julian Carroll. The tower stands 100 feet tall and boasts a 43-bell carillon set into the Gothic clock.
Bill Matteoli, assistant project manager with Covington's Public Works Department said when the repairs are all complete, the bell tower won't look much different than it does today but it will be in better condition and better set to last into the future.
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