The Carillon

Architects: Cram and Ferguson, with Carneal, Johnston and Wright, associate architect.
Date: 1931
Address: Blanton Avenue in Byrd Park.

During World War I, many European towns promised to silence the bells of their town halls and churches until victory over Germany. When peace finally did occur in November 1919, bells all over northern Europe peeled out—an especially happy sound to American troops who were part of the Allied forces. This was the spirit in which a carillon (or bell tower) was the chosen building type to serve as a memorial to Virginia’s dead of World War I (other states built similar memorials). Although a proposal for a memorial by architect Paul Cret of Philadelphia, in association with Richmond architect Marcellus E. Wright, had been selected previously, the War Memorial Commission scrapped that concept and awarded the commission to the Boston firm of Cram and Ferguson. Work by architect Ralph Adams Cram was already known locally as he had designed campus plan and first buildings (in his characteristic Gothic Revival form) Westhampton at University of Richmond and a much smaller commission for redesign of the apse and alter at St. James’s Episcopal Church.The 200-foot-tall, red brick and sandstone Carillon tower is designed in Renaissance Revival form in the spirit of Christopher Wren and rises from a broad, raised podium reached by a pair of dramatically curved stairs. The ground level space was intended to serve as a museum of World War I artifacts.

Although a proposed reflecting pool, extending from the base of the memorial to Blanton Avenue was never built, the mall establishes an elegant, recessed greensward bordered by flowering dogwood trees and establishes one of the city’s most impressive axes.