![bank of clocker bank of clocker](https://qjubs3y9ggo1neukf3sc81r19vv-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GBG_Crocker_Enlarge_1329x840.jpg)
“It’s kind of like getting a Model-T and putting a Porsche drivetrain in it,” Boyd said. The plan is to put in GPS electronically controlled motorized works. “The outdoor elements are not friendly to clocks.” Petersburg clock weighs close to 2,000 pounds, including the pole, and has “an old-school system - just a motor with some gears, the kind where you have to go in and put in oil every few years,” Boyd said. It’s currently working on an old clock tower off Interstate 275 so rusty from not being used for 70 years “you can’t even tell there were clock dials,” said Boyd. The busy longtime company has worked on Hortense, the chiming clock atop Tampa’s historic City Hall. Restored, the clock found a home again a few years later on Central Avenue on a sturdy pedestal within a few feet of its original location. It was removed before the building - in later years, unimaginatively named the Florida Office Building - was demolished in 1977. Petersburg closed in the Great Depression and was there when banks came back. “The bank and the city kept getting complaints from the Poinsettia Hotel next door,” Farias said. This particular version, a classic McClintock clock, was installed in 1924 by a Minneapolis company in the four-story Home Security Building at Central Avenue and Fifth Street - a structure that would grow by four more stories and accommodate several banks over the years.īack then, the clock chimed every 15 minutes. Think Hallmark movies set in small towns: “In most towns, there was a town clock, usually in the center of town,” he said. In the 1920s in a tradition borrowed from Europe, “mostly bank buildings would have these wonderful clocks outside, attached to the building,” Farias said. Boyd of Boyd Clocks, the 78-year-old Tampa company doing the restoration. “Some people might say it’s just a clock,” said Rui Farias, executive director of the St. But first the clock, its hands stilled at approximately 20 minutes till 5, will be restored to working order - even if these days most passers-by check the time on their cell phones.