December 09, 2025
Kristin Hunt/PhillyVoice
Philadelphia artists are painting 20 replica Liberty Bells as part of the city's semiquincentennial celebrations. Some of the unfinished works are pictured above.
Twenty Philadelphia neighborhoods are getting their own Liberty Bells next year for America's 250th birthday. But these replicas are a bit different than the cracked bronze relic in Old City.
The fiberglass bells, which will debut ahead of the semiquincentennial, also are works of art. Each replica is painted with an original scene designed to reflect the area's culture and history. While they're part of a statewide "Bells Across PA" initiative, city officials and organizations have strived to make the pieces unique to Philly. Mural Arts tapped 16 local artists to tackle the bells, and collaborated with the neighborhoods that will host them to work in specific figures and places.
Take, for instance, the replica heading to Bella Vista. Titled "Always Open," it depicts vendors who have sold goods in the Italian Market for more than a century. A woman clutching a potted plant nods to the Vu family's stand on Ninth and Montrose streets. The man next to her, holding up a ruffled pink dress, represents the neighborhood's quinceañera shops. Bygone sellers also populate the scene. A mustachioed man shouldering a block of ice represents the Italian immigrants who worked as "icemen," supplying homes with vital cooling agents before the dawn of refrigerators.
Cindy Lozito works on her 'Always Open' bell, which will hang in the Italian Market.
Artist Cindy Lozito was well suited for the Bella Vista bell. She's lived in the area since 2020, and her Italian great-grandfather was an iceman in New York. This background gave her plenty of ideas, but conversations with the local business association lent her even more material. After learning how many women had worked behind the market's meat counters, she painted in a female butcher. And with the association's endorsement, she added a grungy, much-memed totem of the area: a barrel fire.
"I was actually really excited that they let me put that in here," she said. "It's an important part of the experience of the Ninth Street market, especially in the winter. It's how the vendors who are outside all day stay warm."
Another bell will be displayed at Glen Foerd, the historic Torresdale estate situated by the Delaware River and Poquessing Creek. Artist Bob Dix, who grew up in nearby Wissinoming, designed a piece that would track the area's progression from "nature to industry to nature again." On one side of the bell, he's painted a lush riverbank scene with tall grasses and lots of rodents, a nod to the Lenape meaning of Poquessing ("land of the mice"). Two indigenous people rise from the greenery, though metal gears below them hint at the change to come. The other side of the bell features the historic Glen Foerd mansion and portraits of both the families who occupied it and the industrialists who shaped Northeast Philly, like Matthias Baldwin and Henry Disston.
Dix, who often works in watercolor, has been trying to replicate the effect with acrylic paints. He's achieved this by brushing water, collected from the Delaware River and Poquessing Creek, onto his bell first and then dabbing on paint. The technique blurs and bleeds the contours of his Torresdale scene.
Wissinoming native Bob Dix paints a portrait of Henry Disston onto his replica Liberty Bell illustrating the history of Glen Foerd.
"I'm letting things happen," he said. "There are drips and there are splashes and there are splatters. And that's sort of what I like about it. 'Cause it's not just a coloring book."
The city's other 18 bells will be installed in Chinatown, City Hall, El Centro de Oro, Fox Chase, Germantown, Hunting Park, Logan Square, Mayfair, Mt. Airy, Ogontz, Olney, Parkside, Point Breeze, Roxborough, Southwest Philly, University City, West Philly and Wynnefield. More precise locations will be announced in January.
Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Society Hill also has created and unveiled its own contribution to the "Bells Across PA" program. Visit Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau will follow suit in the coming months.
Though the bells are a departure from Mural Arts' usual work, the organization's departing executive director, Jane Golden, sees the same potential for impact in these smaller-scale replicas. The stories embedded in each, she said, speak directly to the residents of their neighborhoods, offering "little moments of delight" to passersby.
"I think it's really those small moments of intimacy that the bells represent that I really am drawn to," Golden said. "I often think that public art is intimacy in a public space because of the way we form a relationship with the art. I think it's actually quite profound. And while this is not work that is large scale, I think it's still meaningful."
Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
| @thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice
Have a news tip? Let us know.
