Glitch halts tower’s clock for time being

Sat., Jan. 7, 2006

Christopher Rodkey Staff writer

It’s 10:50 in Riverfront Park right now.

It will be 10:50 in an hour, too.

And it’s going to be 10:50 until the park’s historic 1902 Clocktower is fixed. Around the end of December, a pulley broke and sent several heavy counterweights crashing dozens of feet through the wooden floor of the tower.

Since then, time has seemingly stood still in the park – waiting for floors and staircases to be fixed so park maintenance supervisor Doug Schwab can repair the pulley in the 155-foot-tall Clocktower. The historic clock operates essentially like a gigantic grandfather clock, complete with winding key and swinging pendulum.

“It’s almost like a cartoon,” Schwab said.

The clock is wound once a week with a large key that looks like a tire iron. Winding the key lifts the several-hundred-pound counterweights, which slowly descend as the clock ticks on, its giant brass pendulum taking wide, 8-foot swings below.

But a few weeks ago, a maintenance worker was winding the clock when, from the other side of the tower, the weights disappeared beneath the floor in a calamitous fall. The worker wasn’t hurt but was very surprised, Schwab said.

Workers reach the clockworks by climbing a series of ladders and steep staircases. The floors and stairways must be repaired by the city’s carpenter before anyone can go into the tower to fix the clock, Schwab said.

A hand on the north-facing clock broke earlier last year and needed repairs, so this is a perfect opportunity to get the timepiece running again quickly, perhaps in about two weeks, Schwab said.

Park officials said they did not know how much the repairs would cost.

The tower was built as part of the Great Northern Railroad Station in 1902. The train depot was razed during preparations for Expo ‘74, and the remaining tower was declared a historic landmark just before the fair.

The clock is no stranger to stoppages, either. Every few years, a part seems to break, causing time to freeze, Schwab said. Usually the culprit is a strip of spring steel that breaks and sends the pendulum crashing to the floor.

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