I've been reading about the Church of the Angels in
Within the Vale of Annandale, a book by Donald W. Crocker that's becoming increasingly rare, judging from the price of a used copy on Amazon. (I didn't link you to the one on Alibris because they didn't have a picture.) This book is a detailed, homespun history of what is now the southwest Pasadena/Garvanza area. Construction on the
Church of the Angels, 1100 N. Avenue 64, was completed in 1889. It was about the only thing out there at the time, but people came from miles around to attend.
So because it's Sunday, and because I have this photo looking south from the roof of the church, I thought I'd post it. It wasn't until I began editing the picture yesterday, three and a half years after I took it in July of 2008, that I noticed the raised printing on the side of the bell. "Meneel..." something.
That rang a bell. So to speak.
I don't publish every photo I take because they're (obviously) not all good enough. But I keep most of them, and I still had these photos I'd taken in December, 2010 at Fire Station 31 on South Fair Oaks in Pasadena. I did a post on
Overdog about my visit there with Bellis and the
Altadena Hiker. Here's FF/PM Captain Myron Cooper with the station's original bell. I don't remember much of what he told us about it, except that it was made in New York in 1888. That information is forged right on the bell.
Meneely & Co.
..st Troy, NY 1888. Which, if you read the Wikipedia article linked above, you will surmise is East Troy, now known as Watervliet.
Meneely even has an online Museum.
Station 31 has a more modern bell now, but they keep the old one as part of their museum, which you can visit at 135 S. Fair Oaks.
I guess Meneely was
the place to have a bell forged, back in 1888-89. Either that or somebody knew somebody. There's a connection somewhere, if only in the synapses of my mental pictures.
