Clock Tower

A proposed clock tower on East Glenside Avenue has been unanimously approved by the Cheltenham Zoning Board, but Abraham Lincoln's face won't be beaming from its side. Representatives for the owners of the Forst Pavilion building presented elaborate colorful renderings of the proposed 60-foot-high and 12-foot-by-12- foot tower to the board Monday night. The zoning code permits structures no higher than 40 feet in a residential zone. The tower is to be built atop an existing building that will be occupied by Lincoln Investment Planning Inc. and Right Time/Econometrics Inc. investment firms.

More than two years have passed since sleepy Haddon Heights awoke to a barrage of gunfire that killed two law-enforcement officers. The violent encounter with a gun-toting recluse, who had a sex change to become a go-go dancer, took the lives of Haddon Heights patrolman John Norcross, 24, and Camden County investigator John McLaughlin, 37. The two men are remembered as heroes who died to protect their community. Construction of a clock tower to be built in their honor will begin this month outside the municipal building on Station Avenue.

Plans to build a community stadium with the money the borough had inherited to build a chime clock tower have been scrapped because they do not meet the terms of the benefactor's will, officials said Monday at a Borough Council meeting. "The will is clear that the money can only be used to build and maintain a clock tower," said attorney Deborah Oreo, who was filling in for Borough Solicitor Norman L. Goldberg. After officials publicized their hope to build the stadium last month, Oreo said, the attorneys for the estate of Elsie Wright, who left the $483,000 to the borough, told officials they could not go ahead with the plan.

As the 76-year-old resident meandered along West Main Street through the hustle and bustle of Maple Shade's 22d annual sidewalk sale, he noticed a new face in town. "I just looked up and there it was," said William Bopp, who has lived here since 1978. "It" was a new clock tower dressed in copper and brass, the clock's face framed in stained glass, on a corner at North Forklanding Road and West Main Street. Maple Shade welcomed the new four-faced timepiece into its community with a shindig complete with live music, speeches from local politicians, and plenty of hot dogs and cotton candy last weekend.

This much is known about Elsie S. Wright: She had a knack for picking stocks. She married one of her teachers at Temple University. She lived in the Wright mansion on 3.5 acres in the tiny borough of Folcroft. And she didn't want the community to forget her when she was gone. So this week, Wright - who died in 1970 - reached back from the grave to make sure. She gave the town $483,000. There is just one hitch: The Delaware County community must use the money to build a "chime clock tower.

The clock tower on Delmar Drive in Folcroft Borough will soon be chiming the hours. Elsie Wright, who died in 1970, left a bequest of nearly a half- million dollars to build the tower, which will also be able to play 200 two- to three-minute tunes. The computerized clock, between the library and firehouse, is 40 feet high and has a 25-bell carillon.

On April 16, six score and five years and two days after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, the Cheltenham Township Zoning Hearing Board shot down what some called a monument to the fallen leader. The funeral was yesterday in the Wyncote section of the township. The deceased was a huge, bold graphic of Lincoln's face atop a 60-foot-high clock tower in front of Lincoln Investment Planning Inc. at 218 Glenside Ave. A bugler played "Taps" while a man in Civil War dress sat silently on horseback.

The sky's the limit now for Rocky and Adrian. The two rare peregrine falcons took their crucial first flights yesterday from the City Hall clock tower - scarcely a day after Daily News readers gave them their unofficial names. "Both Rocky and Adrian fledged today," Game Commission birdwatcher Ed Fingerhood said after rushing down to City Hall to confirm reports of the young raptors' successful flight. The two-pound fledglings sailed up to a ledge on the clock tower above their 25th-floor nest, rather than fluttering down to a lower level.

LEANING TOWER OF LONDON UNLIKELY, SAY ENGINEERS The British Parliament's Big Ben clock tower may be starting to tilt very slightly but is unlikely to become the Leaning Tower of London, engineers said Sunday. The 135-year-old clock tower housing the mellow-toned bell that looms over Westminster has shifted 0.12 inch to the east over the last two weeks, Sunday newspapers said, blaming nearby tunneling. Exploratory work for an extension to London's subway network passes between 65 and 130 feet under the houses of Parliament and the clock tower.

LONDON - Time stands still for no one. In London, it doesn't even stand straight. Big Ben, perhaps the most iconic structure in all of Britain, is leaning, and lawmakers who work in the shadow of the famous clock tower are trying to figure out what to do about it. Members of Parliament gathered at the House of Commons on Monday to discuss a report containing some drastic solutions to deal with the problem, even though it will be thousands of...

LONDON - With a little British pomp and a lot of British pop, London brought the curtain down on a glorious Olympic Games on Sunday in a spectacular, technicolor pageant of landmarks, lightshows and lots of fun. The closing ceremony offered a sensory blast including rock 'n' roll rickshaws, garbage can percussionists, an exploding yellow car and a marching band in red tunics and bearskin hats. There was a show-stopping reunion of the Spice Girls and a comedy sequence featuring Monty Python's Eric Idle performing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" accompanied by Roman centurions, Scottish bagpipers and a human cannonball.

After 87 years at 400 N. Broad, The Inquirer newsroom is moving to rented space this month in the grand old Strawbridge & Clothier store at Eighth and Market. I don't remember when I started calling the Inquirer Building the Tower of Truth. I don't even recall if it started as a joke, as in the Tower of "Truth. " When I began communications classes at Temple University in 1970, the newspaper was still living down its reputation for vendetta journalism and the blacklisting of liberal politicians, civil rights leaders, and suspect entertainers.

In Mali, fears rise of a countercoup BAMAKO, Mali - Television screens throughout this landlocked country went black momentarily Friday, as residents near the state broadcaster's building saw troops erecting barricades against a possible countercoup a day after a military takeover. On Thursday, mutinous troops seized control of the TV and radio stations and announced a coup. The country's democratically elected president has not been heard from since. The television signal went dead for around an hour, then flickered back on. Facing the camera was a group of a dozen soldiers who read a prepared statement denying that the leader of their coup had been killed, or that the station had been taken back by troops loyal to the country's legitimate government.

THE CENTENNIAL Bell will toll again. An 18-month rehabilitation of Independence Hall's iconic clock tower was mostly completed in December. On Saturday, the results will be heard. Mayor Nutter and U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah will join National Park Service Superintendent Cynthia MacLeod in unveiling the renovations at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4:30 p.m. After years of rain rusted the iron rods that secure the tower, they were replaced with stainless-steel rods. "Towers are a lot more sensitive to the environment than the rest of a building," said Jane Cowley, a Park Service spokeswoman.

LONDON - Time stands still for no one. In London, it doesn't even stand straight. Big Ben, perhaps the most iconic structure in all of Britain, is leaning, and lawmakers who work in the shadow of the famous clock tower are trying to figure out what to do about it. Members of Parliament gathered at the House of Commons on Monday to discuss a report containing some drastic solutions to deal with the problem, even though it will be thousands of...

DANA DiFilippo's "Cops net big bounty via court overtime" article offers an incomplete picture of the Philadelphia Police Department's efforts to reduce overtime expenditures for the past three years. The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) has made significant inroads in monitoring and reducing overtime expenditures with the establishment of the Overtime Management Unit in January 2009. This unit is an excellent example of inter-agency collaboration. Our personnel, working with the Courts and District Attorney's Office, are providing oversight and real-time feedback about overtime expenditures to all involved parties.

Maxine and Michael Kam's triangular, early-1900s house on Fitzwater Street is more than just a colorful place to live. "It is an icon of more than 100 years of South Philadelphia history, as well as a wonderful home," Maxine says. Her family lived in the area long before she was born, and when she was a child, her grandfather owned a shop that made men's caps. "My parents and I lived in Wynnefield Heights, and we used to come once a week to visit my grandparents," she says.

For 104 years, the bell at St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in hilly, blue-collar Manayunk has joyfully summoned the faithful to prayer, celebrated marriages, and marked the ends of wars. Now, in a city whose many sacred symbols include a cracked bell, someone has filed a complaint to silence St. John's 5,000-pound bronze casting. Not completely. Just in the morning. At 7. That's when it rings 18 times for the Angelus. The official reason: It's too loud. The Rev. James A. Lyons, pastor of St. John's, received a warning letter last week from the city Health Department.

John Young never went to a drive-in as a kid but now he runs something called "guerilla drive-in," a roving outdoor movie night for people he dubs "adventure nerds. " "This is a group of people for whom a good time is maybe going out and getting rained on," said Young, 38, a Web developer from West Chester. Exhibiting his own nerdy zeal for quests and puzzles, Young makes the audience go through an elaborate game of hide-and-seek before they get to the payoff, watching a family-friendly flick under a blanket of stars at an off-the-beaten-path spot in Chester County.