To kick off the new season of Bubbler Talk, we’re going to revisit a question we pursued last year, from listener Patricia Mousseau.
She asked: Why can’t the clock tower at the corner of North Avenue and Prospect Avenue keep good time?
Patricia was right: the clock’s three different faces each showed a different time – and only one was accurate.
But we didn’t know why, and we weren’t able to track down the owner of the clock tower building in time to find an answer
Then, just last week, WUWM’s web editor, Michelle Maternowski, noticed an interesting submission to Bubbler Talk…
“Carole’ sent a message saying, ‘Clock tower at Prospect and North was not working? Today it is working!’” Michelle reads. “So I emailed Carole. I said, ‘How did you find out who fixed it?’”
The reply?
“I own the property!”
Carole Wehner has an office on the top floor of the Clock Tower building. She’s a broker for Milwaukee Executive Realty.
“I bought the building in 1999, but it was originally built in 1924 as a warehouse,” Wehner explains. “The clock tower was there in 1924.”
A clock that’s been ticking since the 1920s is bound to have age issues. A few years ago, Wehner had to replace one of its hands, and twice a year she readjusts the time when we go into and out of Daylight Savings.
But, Wehner says she hasn’t ever fielded as many calls about the sometimes unreliable clock as she did after our first story aired in fall.
“They said, ‘You’re trending! People are talking about the clock not working, you need to get the clock fixed!’” she remembers, with a chuckle.
“We thought that the motor wasn’t working. They don’t make these kind of motors anymore, so we were trying to find a replacement.”
Wehner found Badger Motor, so she transported the clock motor from the tower to get it fixed. Afterward, an electrician came to make sure everything got hooked back up properly.
Everything is back in working order, up on the roof above Wehner’s sixth floor office.
Next time you drive past the corner of Prospect and North, look up. Depending on the day, you might still notice conflicting times on the clock tower. Wehner says the north side is most accurate; for whatever quirky reason, the south face sometimes slows down.
But she’s promised to start adjusting the clock by hand once a month – so passersby can rely on the tower to at least get an approximation of the time.
“People do like it, and they enjoy looking at it,” she says. “When the hospital was being built, the steel workers were using that clock to know when to come down for their break.”
“They love it! And it’s a beautiful clock.”
Original post: September 30, 2016
On Milwaukee's East Side, there's an ornate clock tower high above an intersection, with black-and-white clock faces. But you can't count on any of them.
The three clock faces on the tower show three different times, none of which is correct.
Patricia Mouseau reached out to WUWM's Bubbler Talk to find out why...
“I’m wondering why the clock in the tower at the corner of North Avenue and Prospect [Avenue] can’t keep good time?” Patricia asks.
Down the street from the Oriental Theater, its three faces look out onto a row of restaurants, a Whole Foods Market and Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital – Patricia’s workplace.
“There is a UWM dorm and UWM services also right in that neighborhood,” she adds. “I’d think a lot of people would be interested in the local time.”
WUWM'S BUBBLER TALK: What have you always wanted to know about Milwaukee and the region?
During our search for the answer, we discovered Milwaukee has an interesting history with time.
For instance, our mystery clock – which ironically, sits atop a structure named the Clock Tower Building – is far from the only timepiece to grace a tall structure in Milwaukee. Plenty of buildings don their own, perhaps most famously, Rockwell International – the former Allen-Bradley building -- which boasts one of the world’s largest four-sided clocks.
“The history of these clocks generally mirror the history of Milwaukee,” explains Ed Buc, secretary of Milwaukee’s chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
Buc possesses a depth of knowledge about the city’s rich history of clock- and watch-making, beginning in the late 1800s.
“Milwaukee has a lot of nicknames, and one of those nicknames is the ‘City of Steeples’,” he says. “A drive along I-94, you can see all these different churches. And that’s because these different little neighborhoods ended up creating these little parishes, and as part of the architectural element of these churches, they would install these tower clocks.”
Church clock towers were intended as a timekeeper for folks without wristwatches – a fashion that wasn’t as common, back in the day.
And several clock manufacturers have called Milwaukee home, including Mattias Schwalbach, a German immigrant who made parts for many clocks on Milwaukee’s skyline.
Another important name on the local clock scene: Hawkins. As in, Hawkins Clock Center.
Time is something precious to Gloria Hawkins and her husband, Earl. They’ve run their shop on Greenfield Avenue in West Allis for over 40 years.
Gloria has overseen many clock repairs in her time here – including a famous piece in the shop during our visit: the Milwaukee County Zoo clock. All that experience gives her a pretty good idea of what’s wrong with our mystery clock on the East Side…
“These [tower clocks] are all electric. So if they’re not working, that means the motor is shot, and needs to be replaced,” she states.
Another signature feature of our city can affect outdoor clocks, too: cold weather. Experts say exposure to the elements slows and eventually stops clock motors -- and to fix them, somebody with know-how has to come in and tinker by hand.
“Probably your best bet would be to call the manufacture and see if they could help you with that,” she says, adding that one of Hawkins’ repairmen would go to fix a clock like this, as well. “If we are called, we would go out there to check to see if this is something we could fix, absolutely.”
We weren’t able to locate the owner of the Clock Tower Building on Prospect and North in time for this story. But owner: if you’re reading this, a broken clock may be right twice a day, but Milwaukee is wired for a round-the-clock fix!
“There’s a lot to know about clocks, it comes with time,” Gloria Hawkins says.
No pun intended.
“No,” she laughs. “That’s true!”
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