WASHINGTON — It weighs 2,000 pounds, looks like the real thing (minus the crack) and has been missing for more than 35 years. Now, the public is being asked to polish up their magnifying glasses and fuel up their mystery machines to help crack the case of D.C.’s missing liberty bell.
“It will be a real challenge to track it down,” said Josh Gibson, director of communications for the D.C. council. Gibson has also made a name for himself solving a history of mysteries at the Wilson Building.
He plans to release pictures he found of the bell at a news conference at the Wilson Building Monday morning.
Last year, Gibson solved the mystery of a plaque with names found in a broom closet at the Wilson Building. The plaque without a title turned out to contain the names of D.C. government employees who served during World War II. Gibson’s next challenge is now this missing bell.
The story of the D.C. liberty bell begins in 1950, when the nation saw a good year for savings bonds. To celebrate, Gibson said the federal government had a foundry in France make replicas of the Liberty Bell. One was given to each state and U.S. territory and the Treasury Department.
Soon, a new, glistening, crack-free bell was gifted to the District and was placed outside the Wilson Building. It greeted visitors to the Wilson Building atop the steps of the building before being moved to a nearby park, according to Gibson. It remained in that park until around 1980.
During that time, the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation was in charge of monuments and statues along Pennsylvania Avenue. The PADC was established by Congress and was made up of oversight committees, city government and other civic groups.
“It was like a bureaucracy made up of bureaucracies,” Gibson said.
In 1980, the PADC decided to improve Pennsylvania Avenue and the project required that several statues, small monuments and the liberty bell be moved.
Gibson said that over the years, the statues of D.C.’s first mayor, Alexander “Boss” Shepherd, eventually reappeared in front of the Wilson Building, the statue of Ben Franklin was placed in front of the Old Post Office Pavilion, and the Temperance Fountain at the National Archives.
But D.C.’s liberty bell did not.
“It’s still, I would assume, somewhere where it got stashed,” Gibson said.
It could be in storage, sitting in a small park with little foot traffic or in a backyard — the possibilities are endless.
Gibson hopes that with people all over looking for it and asking about it, it will resurface. For people starting their search for the bell, he said it is not the one at Union Station or the one near the Treasury Building.
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