McFarland Memorial Bell Tower
From U of I Wiki
The McFarland Memorial Bell Tower will be a 185-foot tall carillon bell tower on the South Quad of the Urbana-Champaign campus. It is currently under construction and is a part of the Campus Master Plan. The tower will not replace Altgeld Hall, and both are expected to ring, although in what capacity is unknown.
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History
The tower started as a renovation project for Altgeld Hall that had been in planning since at least 1998, but that project was abandoned after renovation for Altgeld Hall wasn't deemed possible.
Funding for the project came from H. Richard McFarland, a 1952 alumnus of the College of Agriculture. McFarland and his late wife, Sarah "Sally" McFarland, wanted to donate funding to the construction of a Presbyterian chapel on campus. After the plans never materialized and McFarland's wife died of ovarian cancer in 2003, he donated $1.5 million to the tower's construction. The tower was named after Sally McFarland.
McFarland previously donated money to the construction of the ACES library, and he contributes two scholarships each year to students with a farm background.
The tower will be here "150 years from now because it can stand the test of time," according to Don Kojich, associate vice president for marketing and communications for the University of Illinois Foundation.
Architecture
The tower will house the 49 bells that were originally planned to replace those at Altgeld Hall. The bells will be cast in the Netherlands. They will be playable by a piano-style keyboard, but will come pre-programmed to play more than 500 songs.
"Eye of Sauron" prank
Presumably a number of students hung a replica of the "Eye of Sauron" in the early hours of Saturday, September 20, 2008. The eye is the symbol of the manifestation of evil and oppression in J.R.R. Tolkien's science fiction/fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. According to the novel:
"The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."
Skip Frost, acting Assistant Chief of University Police, said of the eye: "It's actually pretty cute." No suspects have been caught.
