The Bells in the Fake Tower

6300 W. Touhy Ave, Niles, Illinois

Touhy Avenue is the line between Chicago and Niles. Drive it west and a half-size Leaning Tower of Pisa sits right on the border. Ninety-four feet, leaning 7.4 feet, reinforced concrete. Everyone sees it. Nobody stops.

It's a fake, and it knows it. Built 1931 to 1934, designed by Albert L. Farr, paid for by Robert Ilg, who owned the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilating Company. Ilg built a 22-acre park for his workers, Ilgair Park, with twin outdoor pools and an artificial lake. The pools needed a big water tank. Ilg didn't want an ugly tank on his park, so he built Pisa around it. The tower's first job was plumbing.

That part people know by now. Here's the part the path forgets.

The tower hangs five bells. Three of them were cast in Cavezzo, Italy, in 1623, 1735, and 1747. They are older than the tower by centuries, older than Illinois by more. How they came to sit inside a 1934 replica in a Chicago suburb is not known. The record says so outright: provenance unknown.

They still ring. Every day at 9, noon, 3, and 6, for several minutes. “Red River Valley.” “On Top of Old Smokey.” “My Favorite Things.” A tune written just for Niles. A clock chime every quarter hour.

So the small thing the path forgets: a few dozen feet of suburban pavement where four-hundred-year-old Italian bronze rings a cowboy song, out of a water tank dressed as a monument.

Niles bought the tower from the YMCA in 2015. The price was ten dollars.

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Sources: Village of Niles, “Leaning Tower of Niles” (vniles.com); Wikipedia, “Leaning Tower of Niles” (National Register ref. 100003645, added 2019); Niles Herald-Spectator via the same. Street view: Google, photographer Mark Ellis.