A ninety-eight-foot limestone bell tower that ordinary Detroiters funded a nickel at a time in the depths of the Depression, named for a beloved newspaper columnist who hid her face for twenty years — then revealed it here, before fifty thousand readers.
That tall stone spire rising ahead is the Nancy Brown Peace Carillon — close on a hundred feet of Indiana limestone, eight-sided, Neo-Gothic, with a real carillon of bells up in its crown. The architect was Clarence Day, of the firm Harley, Ellington and Day, and the cornerstone went down in nineteen thirty-nine. It was dedicated the following June — and the first public concert rang out on the Fourth of July, an all-American program of patriotic tunes drifting out over the river. Here's the thing that ought to stop you: it was paid for not by some millionaire, but by ordinary Detroit people, nickel by nickel, in the depths of the Great Depression — tens of thousands of readers chipping in their spare change, near fifty-nine thousand Depression dollars all told, to raise a tower of peace. The bells themselves have been re-rigged and re-wired over the long years, electric chimes swapped in where the old works gave out, so don't fret over the mechanism — it's the why of the thing that matters here. And the woman it's named for? Nobody knew her face for twenty years. She wrote a newspaper column, of all things, and her readers loved her so well they raised this tower in her honor. She's one of the best stories on this whole island, the kind that sticks with you, and there's nobody better to tell it than the fellow riding along with us. I'll let him take it from here — ease off, find a spot, and let the tale carry you a while.
