Liberty Bell Hiding Place
Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
From Sept. 1777 to June 1778, the State House bell was hidden here at Zion's Reformed Church. The Continental Congress removed Philadelphia's bells fearing British destruction. The bell, now known as the Liberty Bell, was transformed into a national symbol by abolitionists.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the anxious autumn of 1777, with the British army marching on Philadelphia, the Continental Congress ordered the city's bells spirited away so they couldn't be melted into cannon. The great State House bell traveled north by wagon and rested for months beneath the floorboards of Zion's Reformed Church here in Allentown before returning home in 1778. Decades later, antislavery reformers seized on its inscription—'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land'—and renamed it the Liberty Bell, turning a cracked colonial bell into an enduring emblem of freedom.
Why it matters
This quiet church basement safeguarded what would become one of America's most powerful symbols, linking the Revolution's fight for independence to the later struggle to make its promise of liberty real for all.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the autumn of 1777, the American Revolution was at one of its most anxious moments. British forces were closing on Philadelphia, the young nation's capital and the seat of the Continental Congress, and the patriots faced the real prospect of losing their most important city.
When an army occupies a city, it takes what it can use. Metal, above all, was precious in wartime, and bells could be melted down and recast into cannon. The Congress understood the danger and moved to keep the city's bells out of British hands.
So the bells went north, away from the fighting, into the safer country of eastern Pennsylvania. It was here, at Zion's Reformed Church in Allentown, that the great State House bell was hidden from September 1777 until June 1778, waiting out the occupation.
People & events
The story has the texture of the Revolution itself: improvised, urgent, and carried out by ordinary people under real threat. The Continental Congress ordered Philadelphia's bells removed, and the State House bell was brought here and concealed while the British held the capital.
A church became a hiding place, its floor a shelter for an object that meant more than its metal. For months the bell rested out of sight, its keepers trusting that quiet and distance would preserve it until the danger passed. When the British left Philadelphia in 1778, the bell could return home.
What happened to that bell afterward is the larger part of its fame. Decades later, abolitionists seized on the words cast around its crown and made it a rallying emblem for the cause of freedom. It was they, more than the founders, who gave the world the name we now use: the Liberty Bell.
Its place in the American story
Few American objects carry as much meaning as this bell, and part of that meaning was forged right here, in the decision to protect it during the Revolution's darkest stretch.
But the marker points to something deeper than a wartime hiding place. The bell's journey from a colonial state house fixture to a national symbol was not automatic. It became the Liberty Bell because a later generation of reformers, fighting to end slavery, heard in its inscription a promise the country had not yet kept, and lifted it up as a standard for that unfinished work.
That is why this quiet church connects two struggles across the American story: the Revolution's fight for independence, and the long effort to extend liberty to all. The same object that patriots hid from an occupying army became, in time, a tool for demanding that the nation's founding words apply to everyone.
If you visit
Come to this site and let the modesty of it work on you. This is a church, not a fortress, and yet for the better part of a year it guarded one of the objects that would come to define American freedom.
Think about the scale of the risk and the smallness of the setting. A city under threat, a wagon on the roads north, and a hiding place chosen because it was ordinary enough to be overlooked. The Revolution was full of such moments, and this is one you can still stand near.
Allentown makes a rewarding stop on any route through Revolutionary Pennsylvania. Pause here, then carry the story with you: the bell you may have seen elsewhere spent an anxious winter in this town, and its meaning kept growing long after it went home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · British occupation of Philadelphia
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lehigh County
Allentown, PA
Carved from Northampton County in March 1812 and named for the river that powered its early industry, Lehigh County anchored the Pennsylvania German heartland around Allentown. Its ground had already earned a place in Revolutionary lore: when the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777-1778, patriots spirited the State House Bell — later called the Liberty Bell — to Allentown, hiding it beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church. The county was also home to George Taylor, one of Pennsylvania's signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Harriet A. Baker
Allentown, PA · est. 1990
Around 1900, the African-American evangelist Harriet A. Baker opened a mission on North Penn Street in Allentown and preached there until her death. Her small storefront ministry took root, and in 1914 it became the first home of St. James A.M.E. Zion Church, which built its permanent home on this spot in 1936. Baker was part of a wider tradition of Black women preachers who founded and sustained congregations at a time when the pulpit was rarely open to them.
Allentown
Whitehall, PA · est. 1947
Laid out in 1762 by the powerful colonial jurist William Allen, this Lehigh Valley town spent its first seventy years known as Northampton before taking its founder's name. In the anxious autumn of 1777, as the British occupied Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was spirited here for safekeeping and Revolutionary wounded were nursed in the town. It grew through the 19th century into a humming center of textiles and cement, earning its city charter in 1867.
Allentown
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947
William Allen, a leading colonial jurist, established this settlement in 1762; it answered to the name Northampton until 1834. In 1777 it sheltered the Liberty Bell from advancing British forces and hosted Revolutionary wounded. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it flourished as a center of textiles and cement manufacture.