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.
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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.