NOVEMBER 21, 2025 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Polina Panasenko
Starting this year, the Chaplain’s Office is offering a weekly opportunity to tour Shove Chapel’s bell tower. Members of the CC community can access the highest viewpoint on campus via a spiral staircase after gathering in the main office of the chapel at 1:15 p.m. every Friday except during fourth week.
“I always think being up on top of Shove Chapel here is really special because you are only a few stories up and yet it gives you a completely different perspective of campus,” said Courtney Salazar, Associate Director of Admission and Coordinator for International Recruitment, during her tour of the bell tower.
Due to the pandemic, the chapel had to temporarily close the bell tower to regular visitors because of a lack of air circulation on the staircase. This year, the chapel began advertising the tour to revive interest in the tower and offer another space for students to explore campus and their place in it.
“When we have an issue in our life, for some people, being able to go up there is to see that life is so much bigger and wider when you can see a vista and to be like, ‘Oh, maybe this thing isn’t quite as big,’” said Kate Holbrook, the College Chaplain.
The bell tower, as well as the chapel itself, has a long and meaningful history. The contrast between the routine chimes and the unique nineteenth-century bells, produced by one of the world’s top carillon manufacturers at the time, comes together in a spacious room located under the tower’s roof. Five bells shipped from Croydon, England, are tuned for Cambridge or Westminster quarters and set to chime every fifteen minutes.
A webpage dedicated to the chapel’s history describes the bells’ journey to CC: ”After being cast in England, the hour bell was shipped by steamer to New York, then passed through the Panama Canal and was unloaded at San Francisco, where it traveled by rail to Colorado Springs.”
A statement by poet Kahlil Gibran engraved on the master bell encapsulates the fast-paced nature of college life and the spirit of learning and dreaming that pervades the campus: “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
Aside from the tour, the chapel hosts lectures, concerts, ceremonies, weddings, memorial services and more. Sacred Grounds – a student-led space on the south side of the building – hosts various events where students can come together to perform music and engage in meaningful conversations.
“I love that we have an opportunity like this here, and I think students should take advantage of it, and I’m so happy I came today,” said Snezana Radoicic ‘28 during her visit to the top of the tower.
Shove Chapel is an interfaith space available to all students regardless of their spiritual practices. It is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and CC students have early morning and late night access to attend events that may be hosted at those times.