Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Does this ring a bell?
A D.C. Council historian is hoping someone may have a tidbit of information leading to the discovery of the District’s long-lost Liberty Bell replica, given as a gift from the federal government in 1950.
The bell sat outside the District Building, on a traffic island in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue for most of its life, according to D.C. Council Director of Communications Josh Gibson. But the record starts getting murky around 1980, when Pennsylvania Avenue was rebuilt.
“The traffic island where the bell was, was going to be eliminated by this Pennsylvania Avenue (beautification project),” Gibson tells WMAL. “They had to relocate the Liberty Bell and three other, smaller monuments.”
Those three smaller monuments all got returned. The Liberty Bell did not.
He’s quick to mention the bell he is looking for is not the one in front of Union Station, and it’s not the one currently in the Wilson Building’s atrium.
Gibson says he has been in touch with officials from the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, which oversaw the project. They could not provide much more information.
Now, Gibson is looking for any photos, stories, any tiny detail from the moving process that could lead him to the bell.
“Believe it or not, there’s very few photos of the bell at all, so if anyone had some photos of the bell back when it was in place, that would add to the historical record,” he says.
The bell was also a well-known meet-up point, he says, so stories may be floating around from family trips in the 50s, 60s, or 70s. 
But the big reason he’s doing this, he says, is to get back what rightfully belongs to the District.
“Someone who was tangentially involved in the process back in 1980 that remembers a tiny detail, that would be welcome,” he says. “Someone whose neighbor has a Liberty Bell in their backyard and they’ve always wondered where that could come from, that would be a welcome tip.”
It’s not the first historical adventure on which Gibson has sent District. He put out a call recently to help identify a “mystery plaque” found during a Wilson Building renovation (turns out it was a plaque honoring World War II veterans from the District) and also found a cache of Wilson Building photos on eBay from President Taft’s snowy inauguration.
A staunch statehood advocate, Gibson says the District as a city onto itself deserves to have its history remembered and recognized.
“We have to remember that we have our own local and hometown history, and not let it always get swallowed up in talk of the federal bureaucracy,” he says.
Someone with that history in mind may have a clue as to where the Liberty Bell replica may be.
Gibson has heard suspicions that the bell has likely been scrapped in the years since. But he doesn’t want to believe them.
“When they got to the scrap yard, somebody had to have said, ‘I’m not melting down the Liberty Bell.'”
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