The Brooklyn Papers / Tom Callan

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower and its famously incorrect clocks.

Tools

Print this story

Facebook this

Tweet this

Digg this

Del.icio.us

Email to a friend

Your name

Your email address

Recipients’ email addresses (Up to ten, separated by commas.)

The four-sided clock atop the Williamsburgh Savings Bank — easily Brooklyn’s most-recognizable building — is broken. And only time will tell when it will be back in business.

Not only are all four faces studded with burnt-out lightbulbs, but the hands all display different times.

On a recent Wednesday night at 10:31, the clock’s south side read 11:55, its eastern face read 9:30, its north face read 2:10 and the western face couldn’t even be read because the bulbs on one hand were completely extinguished.

Mechanically, there’s no excuse for such problems, because the clock features a single motor with four axles that run the hands.

It’s not the first time that the clock has been down for the count. It didn’t work for most of the 1970s and 1980s — a fitting symbol of Brooklyn’s decline, some said — until then-owner Republic National Bank sunk millions into renovating its landmark property.

Time — the right time — healed all wounds. But then the clock slowed down again.

“When we bought the building, we were told that the clock would be the biggest headache and that’s turning out right,” said Andrew MacArthur, a spokesman for the Dermot Company, which is converting the landmark into luxury condominiums.

MacArthur blames the problem on “gear stuff,” refuting a popular local myth that the high winds atop the tower throw off the clock’s hands.

Not everyone is upset at the clock, seeing its quirkiness as a symbol of an off-beat borough.

“When you see two different faces it is like seeing two different paintings,” said Robert Goldstrom, an artist who has chronicled the clocktower in more than 50 watercolor paintings.

“I have an affection for its current state of misoperation,” he said.

©2006 Community Newspaper Group