PHILADELPHIA – A man wielding a small hammer struck the Liberty Bell at least four times Friday morning, leaving an imprint of the hammer on the lip of the 249-year-old bell.
National Park Service spokesman Phil Sheridan said that the pavilion in downtown Philadelphia where the bell is housed was temporarily closed while the bell was examined by Park Service curators.
Sheridan said that the hammer-wielding man had participated in a tour and speech about the bell Friday morning. He was apprehended immediately by Park Service police and is in custody.
“The rangers heard a noise of metal hitting metal, and the individual had a hammer maybe three to four inches long, and the individual was hammering on the rear of the Liberty Bell,” said Sheridan.
Elaine Gross, a private tour guide, said she was giving a tour to children from Pomona, Calif., when the man, whom she described as disheveled, struck the bell.
“He said, ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything violent,”‘ Gross said.
The bell was delivered to Philadelphia to be hung in the State House in August 1752. It was cracked by a stroke of the clapper while being tested and was twice recast in Philadelphia before being hung in the State House steeple in June 1753.
The name “Liberty Bell” was first applied in 1839 in an Abolitionist pamphlet. It was rung for the last time for a George Washington birthday celebration in 1846, during which it cracked irreparably. Since then it has been ceremonially tapped several times.
The bell eventually was taken from the State House steeple and put on display at floor level just inside the doors of Independence Hall.
The bell has not been maliciously struck since 1976, when it was moved to a glass-enclosed pavilion about 100 yards from Independence Hall, according to the park service. A new $11 million glass, steel and granite pavilion is being built. More than 1.6 million people visit the Liberty Bell annually, and a typical summer weekend day can draw 10,000 visitors.
