KDSN RADIO News
Iowa State University celebrating 125 years of the Campanile
Iowa State University will celebrate the 125th anniversary Sunday of a memorial gift that has become an enduring symbol of the school in Ames.
Music professor Michael Golemo says the bells for ISU’s campanile were a gift from Edgar Stanton to go in a dormitory named after his wife Margaret McDonald Stanton who died in 1895. “Edgar Stanton wanted to fund putting a small bell tower in that facility, but that but the facility that building wouldn’t sustain the tower, and so instead they ended up building the freestanding Campanile tower,” he says. Edgar Stanton was part of ISU’s first graduating class and served in several roles at the school, including four stints as acting president over 50 years. Margaret Stanton was the first dean of women at the school and was there 25 years before she died.
Golemo says the bells have been upgraded through the years and the song “The Bells of Iowa State” added to their stature and importance. “I like to think about the idea that faculty are maybe on campus for a couple of decades, and students a couple of years, and we as administrators are are mere caretakers of this incredible institution. But the bells of Iowa State are forever, and generation after generation the bells chime and really ring out the sound and the soul of what it means to be an Iowa State Cyclone,” Golemo says.
He is the director of bands at ISU and says the position of the Campanile gives it a different sound. “Most carillons are built in town squares, and so when they are played, they are so often played with the hustle and bustle of an urban community in their surroundings,” he says. ISU’s bell tower is right in the middle of campus in an open space that allows the sound of the bells to travel. “The fact that our Campanile is in the midst of this palatial lawn at the heart of Central Campus, it actually has even a greater musical and aural impact because of its really unique location,” Golemo says.
The Campanile has also become the subject of some folklore. One story suggests a woman is not a true coed until she has been kissed under the Campanile) at the stroke of midnight. “Whether it is the romance of Campaniling beneath the tower, or laying on the lawn and doing your homework or hammocking and resting between classes, or going out and playing frisbee in the shadow of the Campanile. I think that that tower, and what it means is always kind of at the heart of the experience of being here,” Golemo says.
It is believed to be one of the most photographed places on campus.
.png)
