The bell tower in the First Congregational Church of Rochester is a lot roomier after crews removed the historic 1892 bell from its cradle on Friday morning.

The bell, which rings in the tune of D, has been a fixture in the circa 1837 church, but it has been silent for approximately 15 years. The church installed an electric bell around that time to replace the much harder to ring 1,600 pound bell.

The bell was one of many crafted by the Blake Bell Company of Boston, owned by William Blake, an apprentice of Paul Revere.

"There's a lot of history in that bell," said Bruce Rocha Sr.

The founder of Fisher & Rocha, Inc., he along with Ken McLain and Aaron Pereia, have headed a restoration project at the church that included fortifying the ceiling beams in the attic.

On Friday, they were joined by the crane and rigging company N.C. Hudon of New Bedford, who extracted the bell.

Ron Stafford, a trustee of the church, said discussions began about a year ago to have the bell removed.

"It wasn't being used, so we figured we would get it out of there. It put a lot of weight on the building," he said.

It only took about an hour to remove the bell, much faster than it would have been to install it. Without the use of a motor-powered crane, Rocha said it probably took weeks for the original installers to lift the hefty bell up into the tower.

The trickiest part of the removal was squeezing into the small tower.

"We're just lucky we could get the head of the crane in there," Rocha said.

Dennis Hudon said he had a lot of experience working on such projects.

"We'll get it out of there one way or another," he said.

Rocha and Hudon's crews were able to secure the bell and remove it without any trouble, and while it will no longer have a bird's eye view of Plumb Corner, the bell will still have a place at the Congregational Church.

Stafford said the bell is "a part of the history of the church," so it isn't going anywhere. A structure will be built on the lawn in front of the church that might even leave room for the clear D tone to sound again.

"It would be kind of cool to have a rope or something on it so people can ring it," he said.