Burns Tower turns 60

This month marks the 60^th anniversary of a Stockton building with music in its heart and forgotten treasures in its basement: Burns Tower at University of the Pacific.

The birthday boy, a 12-story tower, was built in 1963-64. UOP’s leaders concluded the campus needed a water tower; it was decided to cloak the tank in a neo-gothic campanile that harmonized with the campus’s beautiful collegiate gothic architecture.

“Architect Howard G. Bissell con­siders the Robert E. Burns Tower his crowning achievement at Pa­cific,” reported the February 1964 Pacific Review.

A second designer, Glen H. Mortensen, told an interviewer he was “Inspired by the beautiful buildings he had so greatly admired in Europe during his time in the U.S. Army Air Corps.”

Of the tower’s stained-glass windows on the top three stories, Mortensen said, “I picked the separate pieces out by hand and laid them all out on the ground before we started putting them up. We even painted the water tank white so the light would be reflected from the inside out.” 

The stained-glass windows, illuminated from on high at night, make the tower a lighthouse of lovely color that glows over surrounding neighborhoods.

Burns Tower’s biggest export, however, is not light but sound. For most of its life the tower contained a strongly amplified carillon, an instrument that plays songs via tiny electronic hammers that strike pieces of cast bronze to produce bell-like chimes. 

Audible up to a mile away, the carillon played the Westminster chimes (12 notes, which you’ve heard a million times, even if you don’t recognize the name) every hour from 7 a.m. to 11 pm, followed by the time: one gong for one o’clock, two for two, and so forth.

At noon and 5:30 pm the carillon played songs from its playlist. Songs ranged from Broadway to adult pop chestnuts to classical. Some of the classical pieces were enchanting. Raking your leaves gains an unexpected aesthetic dimension when Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring wafts overhead like a sparkling cloud.

The carillon also had an organ-like keyboard and could be played manually. The late music professor Charles Schilling occasionally used to commandeer the carillon. The impish Schilling even worked in a sly dig or two. For instance, once when a new president announced an overly optimistic slate of reforms, Schilling played “Beautiful Dreamer.”

The tower used to sign off with Hail Pacific, Pacific’s alma mater, at 11 o’clock. But some early risers objected, so now the tower plays its last gig at 9:30 pm.

Another change is the mechanism. The old carillon would break down. Parts became hard to find. So in 2020 it was replaced with a computerized system of MP3 audio and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) files. The bells are now digital.

“I don’t notice a huge difference between the tones,” said Daniel Walker, the digital media engineer at Pacific who digitized the chimes. 

But Jeff Crawford, assistant professor of practice and studio manager in Music Management & Music Industries Studies, says there is a subtle difference.

“The MP3 data compressed file sacrificed the low end,” he said. “It doesn’t have the depth the old bells had.”

Whatever the case, neighborhood residents say the tower is a beloved fixture.

“Oh, I love it,” said Jana Medek. “I like it that it changes songs, depending on the day.”

“I like the music, the John Denver song,” said Sam Faulkner, “He was one of my favorites back in the day.”

“That was one of the reasons we chose to live in the neighborhood,” said Amparo Miranda. “It just makes us so welcome and happy. It’s beautiful.”

Walker chose the latest songs. Among them is the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” theme. That’s appropriate because “Raiders” includes stock footage of UOP’s campus.

Another “Raiders”/UOP angle: A couple years ago a forgotten safe was rediscovered in the tower’s basement. The combination was lost, so the fire department pried it open with the jaws of life. Out came the original 1851 charter document, a diploma printed on animal skin, journals, and, among other artifacts, a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet from ancient Sumer.

Scholars deciphered it. “Basically it was a receipt of some sort,” said Michael Wurtz, head of Special Collections and Archives. “Like, ‘You bought 14 goats’.”

The tablet was procured for then-President Tully C. Knoles in 1920 by famous archeologist Edgar Banks. Banks is often cited as the model for Indiana Jones.

Several other bits of Burns Tower trivia:

·      Staffers arriving to work one Monday in the late 1980s were horrified to find that a huge colony of bats had taken over the anteroom to the president’s office on the top floor. 

·      In 1987 a woodpecker pecked on downspouts for days on end, driving all 27 tower employees, including then President Stanley McCaffrey, to distraction. “I can’t imagine what satisfaction a bird gets pecking away at the pipe,” McCaffrey said. He added, “He’s going to have a dull pecker—if I may call his pecking mechanism that.” 

·      Around 2010 one of the stained-glass windows dislodged, plunged 10 stories, and crashed into an empty bench at the foot of the tower. Talk about flying colors.

Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com.