Alexander Graham Bell Honors and Tributes - Honorary Names of Schools, Organizations, Awards, and Placenames

Honorary Names of Schools, Organizations, Awards, and Placenames

A number of schools, institutes, organizations, academic scholarships, awards, and places have been named in honour of Bell. A number of historic sites and other marks also commemorate both him and the first telephone company buildings. Among them are:

Of international stature (partial list):

• Bell Crater, a large crater on the moon, named in his honor by the International Astronomical Union in 1970;
• The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to annually honor outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications (since 1976);

In Canada (partial list):

• The City of Brantford, Ontario dedicated a major monument to Bell in 1917, the Bell Telephone Memorial within its Alexander Graham Bell Gardens, its inscription reading: "This Monument, the work of Walter S. Allward, R.C.A., Sculptor, was placed here through International subscription by the Bell Telephone Memorial Association to mark the invention of the Telephone at Brantford by Alexander Graham Bell in 1874". Additionally a large monument of a seated Bell is found at the entrance to Brantford's newer Bell Telephone Company of Canada building;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships for Masters and Doctoral studies in engineering and the natural sciences is awarded annually by Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Ottawa, Ontario ;
• The Canadian Acoustical Association (CAA) annually awards the Alexander Graham Bell Student Prize in Speech Communication and Behavioral Acoustics for graduate research, named in tribute of Bell's lifelong research of speech and deafness;
• Alexander Graham Bell Institute, a part of Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia -and searchable on its website here;
• Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, maintained by Parks Canada, which incorporates the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. The site is close to Bell's original Beinn Bhreagh estate. The National Historic Site in Baddeck, in conjunction with the Bell Museum are open to visitation;
• The Bell Homestead, also known as Melville House, overlooking Brantford, Ontario and the Grand River, was Bell's first home in North America. Both the Bell Homestead and the historic Bell Telephone Company Building (see below) are open to visitors;
• The Bell Homestead Society maintains two historic buildings related to the extended Bell family: the first being their private residence (see item above) and the other one being The Henderson Home, Canada's first telephone company building of the nascent Bell Telephone Company of Canada. The Henderson Home was originally built on Sheridan Street within the city of Brantford, Ontario, and was then carefully relocated in 1969 to its current site at the historic Bell Homestead site. Both the Bell Homestead and the Bell Telephone Company Building are open to visitation;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Memorial Park, featuring a broad neoclassical monument depicting mankind's ability to communicate across the globe instantly;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Museum (opened in 1956), which is part of the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site (completed in 1978) in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Numerous museum artifacts were contributed by Bell's daughters;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Club (founded 1891), Canada's oldest continuing women's club, which grew out of a social organization started at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, by Mabel Bell, Alexander's wife. Bell's granddaughter and former secretary, Dr. Mabel Harlakenden Grosvenor, was its former Honourary President, until her death in 2006. The club, originally created as The Young Ladies Of Baddeck Club, was renamed in 1922 after Bell's death, and after Mabel Bell declined the use of her name.
• Graham Bell-Victoria School, a public school in Brantford, ON (an amalgamation of two different public schools);
• Alexander Graham Bell Public School, in Ajax, ON;
• Alexander Graham Bell High School, in Halifax, Nova Scotia;
• Graham Bell Court, in Milton, Ontario;
• Alexander Graham Bell Drive in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which intersects two other historically named streets associated with Bell: Douglas McCurdy Drive and Silver Dart Way, adjacent to J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport;
• rue Graham-Bell (street), in the city of Boucherville; and in Sainte-Foy, Quebec City; in Saint-Bruno; in Chicoutimi plus also in St-Hubert, Quebec;
• The Graham Bell Museum Gift Shop & Tea Room, on Big Baddeck Road, Baddeck, Nova Scotia, B0E 1B0.

In France:

• rue Graham Bell (street), in the city of Metz, Lorraine; and in La Roche-sur-Yon in western France; and in the town of Mérignac, Gironde, Aquitaine; plus also in the community of Noisy-le-Grand, Marne-la-Vallée, Paris;
• avenue Alexander Graham Bell, in Parc Léonard de Vinci, Marne La Vallee, Paris.

In India:

• Alexander Graham Bell Road, in Malabar Hill, Mumbai.

In Germany:

• Alexander Graham Bell Straße, in Bonn;
• Graham-Bell Weg", in Garbsen, Hannover;
• Graham-Bell Straße, in Augsburg.

In Mexico:

• Graham Bell Steet, in Residencial Los Robles, Apodaca.

In New Zealand:

• Graham Bell Avenue, in Mount Roskill, Auckland.

In Russia:

• Graham Bell Island, in the Franz Josef Archipelago.

In South Africa:,

• Graham Bell Street, in Despatch, Eastern Cape, a small town near Port Elizabeth.

In Switzerland:

• Graham Bell Strasse, in Reinach.

In Spain:

• Graham Bell Street, in Campanillas, Málaga.

In The Netherlands:

• Graham Bell Straat, in Amsterdam;
• Graham Bell Straat, in Heerlen.

In the United Kingdom (partial list):

• Alexander Graham Bell Birthplace, at a house on 14 South Charlotte Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, where there's an inscribed stone beside the doorway of his birth home, and additionally one within its entrance way;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Building, at the University of Edinburgh, which was named after him;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Apartment, an apartment-hotel also in Edinburgh.

In the United States (partial list):

• The Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the informal name of the Volta Laboratory established by the Volta Associates in 1881;
• Two historic tablets plus a minor monument near Exeter Place in Boston, MA mark the location of the Alexander Graham Bell's first successful telephone and the words he first transmitted to his assistant, Thomas Augustus Watson. The monument's inscription reads: "• Birthplace of the Telephone • Here, on June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson first transmitted sound over wires. This successful experiment was completed in a fifth floor garret at what was 109 Court Street and marked the beginning of world-wide telephone service • The First Telephone •"'. The separate historic markers were erected by The Bostonian Society and the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1916, and by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 2006;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Professorship of Health Care Entrepreneurship was established by Boston University in his memory;
• The Alexander Graham Bell Scholarship is awarded to Boston University College of Engineering students;
• Alexander Graham Bell School, a public grammar (K–8) school on the north side of Chicago, Illinois, providing programs to deaf, blind, mentally disabled, gifted as well as standard students;
• Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and with chapters across the United States, as well as internationally. The Association also sponsors the AG Bell College Scholarship Awards Program for a number of deaf or hard of hearing full-time students pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees. In 2010, 18 awards were granted ranging from $1,000 to $10,000;
• Alexander Graham Bell School PS 205Q, a public (K–5) school in Bayside, Queens New York;
• Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School Academy, a (PK-8) public school on Larchmere Blvd. in Cleveland, Ohio serving regular and hearing impaired students;
• Alexander Graham Bell School, a preschool and kindergarten center for the Columbus Public Schools Hearing Impaired Program (CHIP) in Columbus, Ohio;
• Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, a (K–1) public school in Columbus, OH;
• Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, a (PK–1) public school for regular, gifted and deaf students in Chicago, IL;
• Alexander Graham Bell Montessori School, in Wheeling, IL. N.B.: Both Alexander and his wife Mabel Gardiner Hubbard were significant supporters of the Italian Montessori early childhood teaching method and helped established early Montessori schools in North America;
• Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School, in Detroit, MI;
• AG Bell Accelerated Academy, a school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
• Alexander Graham Bell Middle School, in San Diego, California
• AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, at 3417 Volta Place, NW, Washington, D.C., an independently governed, subsidiary corporation of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, which provides certification of listening, verbal and spoken language therapists, specialists and educators;
• Alexander Graham Bell Hall, one of the residences at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), adjacent to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) building, was named in honor of Bell and dedicated in 1979 (Bell had spent significant amounts of his personal fortune creating institutions for the deaf). A brass plaque mounted at the entrance noted that Bell was "a brilliant and innovative teacher of the deaf who dedicated a great portion of his life to help deaf children develop the potential for listening, speaking and lipreading. Today, NTID emulates the ideals for which Alexander Graham Bell worked". However those opposed to Bell's sole reliance on oralism, as well as his advocacy in the prevention of deafness via eugenics, protested the use of his name for the institutes's residence. In July 2008, the RIT president and its board of trustees approved the removal of the "Alexander Graham Bell Hall" name, along with its plaque. The RIT action is apparently the only known instance of a removal of Bell's name for ideological reasons;
• Alexander Graham Bell Boulevard, in Lehigh Acres, Lee County, Florida;
• Alexander Graham Bell Drive, in Columbia, Maryland, and in Reston, Virginia.