This 5,000-pound bell hung in Seattle’s first professional fire department headquarters at Columbia Street and Seventh Avenue. After a great fire destroyed 100 acres of the city’s business district and waterfront in 1889, Seattle organized its first professional fire department. Josiah Collins, who was chief of the volunteer fire department at the time, commissioned this bell as a gift to the city, replacing the old one damaged in the fire.

The bell served the station until 1919 when electronic communications made it obsolete. It eventually arrived at MOHAI in time for the museum’s 1952 grand opening at its original location in the Montlake neighborhood. It moved with the museum to Lake Union Park in 2012.