St. Teresa’s overlooks a small garden in the rear of the church. Photos by the author.

Even as we discuss living in space, vestiges of the past are all around us. Neighborhoods are have reclaimed call boxes, named restaurants after area founders, and installed heritage trail markers. Giving history center stage puts life today into proper perspective.

Centuries before wrist watches or mobile phones helped us keep our schedules or Twitter gave us the news, sextons tolled church bells to tell everyone what time it was. Some churches in downtown Washington still ring their bells today, but in Anacostia, the oldest church bell tolls no more.

Built in 1879 at the corner of Washington & Fillmore Streets (now 13th & V Street SE), Saint Teresa of Avila is the oldest surviving church east of the river.

While the church remains an integral part of the neighborhood’s social fabric, a bell in its rear hasn’t been struck for years, according to conversations with a number of local residents.

In 1893, 14 yeas after St. Teresa’s opened, the congregation acquired a bell so it could tell the community it was holding services. With no place to install the bell atop the church, St. Teresa’s built a wooden tower in the rear, and with the aid of horses, a crude winch, and a series of pulleys, raised the bell to the top. The city ruled the wooden tower a fire hazard in 1965, which led to the construction of a concrete and steel bell mount. The bell rests in that mount today.

“In former days bells were endowed with a large measure of personality, and were popularly supposed to be in league with the spirits of the air and other supernatural agencies,” reported the New York Times in the late 19th century. “In consequence of such beliefs many of the old cathedral bells in England and on the Continent of Europe have some fine legends or fanciful stories connected with them in which they are made to play the part of good angels or ministering spirits with voices of warning or of hope and cheer to the children of men.”

Close up of the church bell in the rear of St. Teresa.

I’ve heard many stories about the St. Teresa bell over the years. Earlier this year, a nonagenarian fondly recalled to me that as a child, when the lamplighters came around and the evening bell rang at St. Teresa, it was cue to go home. Others have recalled that in early April 1968, the bell rang simultaneously with small-scale riots breaking out on Nichols Avenue and Good Hope Road. More recent history agrees that the bell rang up until the mid-1980s and that new church leadership along with noise complaints from some of the neighborhood led to it being discontinued.

“One of the blessings about the Historic District and my block in particular was the abundance of places of worship,” writes Angela Copeland, a resident of the 1300 block of W Street SE and administrator of the Great Ward Eight Facebook page. “When I first moved here, there used to be several religious parades conducted by multiple churches including St. Teresa. I don’t see them so much anymore. I’ve visited St. Teresa. It’s historic value to the neighborhood and the District’s Catholic community cannot be overstated.”

With the neighborhood slowly regenerating and being reborn, appeals to Anacostia’s history are everywhere— for example, Anacostia was DC’s first subdivision as well as the home of Frederick Douglass. As part of Anacostia reclaiming its past, should the bell ring once again?