*Location:

   St.Mary of the Visitation Church (RC)
   (aka St.Mary of the Assumption)
   East Jefferson and North Linn Streets
   Iowa City, Iowa, USA
   LL: N 41.66271, W 91.53189

Site locator map

*Player:

   Charles L. Brungardt
   E: brunchman/@/mchsi DOTcom

*Contact:

   St.Mary's Parish Office
   302 East Jefferson Street
   Iowa City, IA  52245-2137
   T: (319)337-4314   F: (319)337-8551
   E: icstmary@icstmary.org
   - or -
   F. Richard Lalor  [church historian]
   122 North 7th Avenue
   Iowa City, IA  52245-3302

*Schedule:

   Briefly at 10 and 5 minutes before
   most Sunday services;
   Angelus at noon and 6pm.
   6am Angelus and ting-tang quarters
   were discontinued long ago, but
   equipment remains.

*Remarks:

   Made by Henry Stuckstede & Co.,
   St.Louis, MO; includes A# by Francis
   Mayer, St.Louis, MO (1854) and F# by
   Jones & Co., Troy, NY (1867); those two
   & the Stuckstede bourdon originally
   swung; added semitones are flat 7th,
   sharp octave, sharp 4th and its octave.
   Electrified (and chimestand removed)
   by Verdin in 1941 using most of chime
   action (reorganized); keyboard
   2 octaves C-C.

*Technical data:

   Electric-keyboard chime of 17 bells
   Pitch of heaviest bell is C# in the middle octave
   Transposition is nil (concert pitch)
   Keyboard range:     C#A#  /    NONE  
   There are four added semitones
   The whole instrument was installed in 1885
     by the maker cited in Remarks above
   Auxiliary mechanisms: nCW3HQ
   Tower details: 
     Height of console:                  5 meters above ground
     Height of lowest level of bells:   19 meters above ground
     Height of highest level of bells:  22 meters above ground
     Belfry openness:  40%
   Year of latest technical information source is 2000

The church Website has no photo of the building.  Formerly there were many photos of the interior, but now there are none except in videos and on the Facebook page.  Formerly there was a History page (under About Us), which mentioned the bells and had a small photo of some of the fixed bells, but that has disappeared and there is no mention of the bells elsewhere.......  There used to be a separate choir Website, which included a short page about the chime, but it seems to have disappeared, and is not available from archive.org.

Where the main part of this work lies in the sequence of output of the first Stuckstede bellfoundry.

Ranking among all North American chimes by size (number of bells).
Ranking among all North American chimes by weight (pitch).
Ranking among all North American chimes by year of completion.

Index to all tower bell instruments in IA.

   This page was built from the database on 14-Dec-20
   based on textual data last updated on 2020/12/12
   and on technical data last updated on 2013/06/25