The Old Main Bell

Old Main Bell Sounds Victory

For decades, the Old Main Bell proudly crowned Old Main, the first building on the Carthage campus in Carthage, Illinois. After athletic victories, students would race down Evergreen Walk to ring the bell, resounding another Carthage triumph.

In the 1960s, when Carthage moved its campus from Illinois to Wisconsin, Tau Sigma Chi fraternity — the Turtles — saw to it that the victory bell made its way to Kenosha. Its Illinois home had been in a tower on the roof of Old Main. In Kenosha, for many years, the bell resided in a wishing well constructed by the Turtles and located next to the Seidemann Natatorium (now home to the Campbell Student Union).

When the N. E. Tarble Athletic and Recreation Center was constructed, the bell lost its home and went into storage.

In 2004, the victory bell found a new home in a new scoreboard on Art Keller Field. The Turtles, as part of their 50th anniversary celebration, had raised more than $55,000 to erect the new scoreboard. The bell is rung after every Carthage athletic team victory.

The Old Main Bell is housed within one of the scoreboard’s lannonstone pillars.