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Only time will tell when Brooklyn’s own timepiece — the clock atop the 512-foot-tall Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower — will start tolling for us again, despite recent assurances by the building’s owner that the beloved four-faced chronograph would be restored by July 4.
Back in May, Andrew MacArthur, a principal at the Dermot Company, which has been transforming the former bank building and dental haven into million-dollar condos, told the Real Deal, “We’re aiming to have the renovations done by the Fourth of July.”
But now, more than six weeks after Independence Day, the clock remains cloaked in dour black netting.
“I don’t have news, which means we don’t know when it will come off,” apologized Barbara Wagner, a spokeswoman for the developer. “It is definitely stalled until the fall sometime.”
Last year, The Brooklyn Paper reported on the sad disrepair of clocktower, its four faces showing different times, its light bulbs burnt out.
At the time, MacArthur attributed the disrepair to “gear stuff.”
“When we bought the building, we were told that the clock would be the biggest headache and that’s turning out right,” he said.
Dermot Company is not the first corporation to wrestle with the hands of time. The clock didn’t operate for most of the 1970s and 1980s, until Republic National Bank renovated the landmarked site.
Ever since the tower, the tallest in Brooklyn, was built in 1929, the clock has helped hapless urbanites keep tabs on that most elusive of forces. Now, it’s helping Brooklynites keep time in a different way.
“Now, you kind of think, ‘Gosh time goes so fast, and yet here’s the clocktower and it’s still not repaired,” said Sharon Barnes, a Clinton Hill resident.
©2007 The Brooklyn Paper
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