Times flows on, but not on these two clocks
They should have bought Timex clocks, which can take a licking and keep... you know the rest.
Downtown's two street clocks, including a Rolex no less, give the correct time, as people love to quip about broken timepieces, "only twice a day."
The Rolex, on North Elm Street in front of the Chamber of Commerce Building, stopped at 7:21 a few weeks ago. This is $20,000 timepiece whose minutes and seconds are suppose to be kept precise by satellite.
Chamber officials say they hope to get the clock up and running again soon.
This is the clock's second breakdown since the chamber installed it 1998. The next year, a delivery truck rear-ended the clock, knocking it down. The delivery company's insurance paid for a replacement.
The other broken clock, without a brand name, is at Bellmeade and Commerce Place. It has been stuck on 2:09 for years.
Tom LaRose, whose family owns a watch parts business then located on on Commerce Place, bought the clock from a jewelry store in Marietta, Ohio. He placed it in the early 1980s beside his father's clock museum, which occupied an old Packard auto dealership at Commerce and Bellemeade. The building now houses Architectural Salvage.
The clock museum closed in 1984, but the street clock ticked on until the early or mid-1990s. An extreme cold spell in the city halted it. The clock has never resumed running.
Meanwhile, with the renewed emphasis on restoring original facades on downtown buildings, the time is correct, pardon the expression, for bringing back the Wimbish Insurance clock. The four-side clock extended for years from the Southeastern Building over the sidewalk at North Elm and Market streets.
When people couldn't decide where to meet, they'd usually compromise by saying, "meet you under the Wimbish clock."
The clock was taken down when the city passed an ordinance prohibiting signs extending over the sidewalk. The city recently modified the ordinance.
The Southeastern Building was recently sold and architectural firm of Teague Freyaldenhoven Freyaldenhoven is studying the 13-story, built before 1920, for possible new uses.
