"Air Management Services (AMS) has received citizen's complaints of loud amplified sounds from the above premises every day at 7 a.m. AMS would like to advise you that amplified sound and all other noise . . . shall not exceed five decibels above background level measured at the property boundary of the nearest occupied residential property," states the letter, signed by Roger M. Fey, the city's enforcement officer for air and noise pollution.
Earlier this year, the church's business manager received an anonymous phone call from a woman who said she lived a block from St. John's.
"I will never forget this," said Rosemary Swider, who has worked at the church for 16 years and took the call. "She said the bell was disrupting her quality of life."
The church has stood in Gothic splendor on Rector Street since 1856. The parish originally ministered to the neighborhood's Irish Catholics. It now serves 1,900 families. About a block away, restaurants, bars, and boutiques have sprouted along Main Street, transforming the working-class community into a destination for college students and young professionals.
A clock tower - with the bell - was erected at the church in 1906, long before the city passed a noise ordinance. The church, mindful of neighborhood needs, has, over the last half-century, cut back the number of times the bell tolls.
Until the 1960s, the bell struck every half-hour and all through the night. When Lyons arrived in 1994, he restricted the bell's operating hours, shutting it off at 9 p.m.
The bell has always sounded the Catholic call to prayer known as the Angelus. Traditionally, the Angelus bells sound 18 times at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m.
