A Clock Moves in Grand Central, and Memories Stir
By JAMES BARRON NY TIMES
James Barron/The New York Times The old clock in its new space at Grand Central Terminal.
It was never the famous “meet-me-under-the-clock” clock at the old Biltmore Hotel. Nor is it the gilded four-faced centerpiece in the concourse of Grand Central Terminal. It was just a plain workaday clock that spent most of its life in a lower-profile nook at Grand Central answering one of two questions: Can I make the train, for people sprinting to catch one, or how late was it, for people sprinting off a train that had finally arrived.
Now it has a new home. It has been moved downstairs, to the dining concourse on the lower level. It is on the ceiling near the gates to Tracks 108 and 109.
Metro-North Railroad officials hope more people will see it there. Its old home was on the upper level, inside the gate at Track 19 — “above the block,” in railroad lingo. The block is where the tracks end.
Metro-North is sprucing up the area inside the gates on the upper level, with new terrazzo floors and energy-efficient lighting, said Marjorie Anders, a Metro-North spokeswoman. It was the new lighting that drove out the clock: The new fixtures blocked the clock’s round face.
The clock, in a square oak case, is a relic from the pre-digital days when Grand Central rolled out a red carpet — literally — for the 20th Century Limited. The clock’s face carries a name that railroaders remember, that of the Self Winding Clock Company of New York.
Once there were more than 50,000 Self Winding clocks across the country, all maintained by Western Union, according to Nancy Dyer, the librarian and archivist of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
“The time was picked up from the Naval Observatory in Washington and transmitted by Western Union to Self Winding clocks, which were in the train stations everywhere,” she said. “This was part of the standardizing of time before time zones and all that. Every railroad operated on their own time — if you were riding on the B&O, the lines ran on Baltimore time. if you were riding on the Pennsy” — the nickname for the Pennsylvania Railroad — “it was the time in Philadelphia. On the Central” — as the New York Central was often called — “it was the time in New York City.”
“It was important that everything was coordinated,” she said, “because if you had a single track, the trains could run into each other.”
Self Winding was the brainchild of two Brooklynites, Charles Pratt, the tycoon who founded Pratt Institute, and Henry Chester Pond, who already held a patent for an “electro-mechanical clock” when they started the company. Self Winding was looking to cash in on the railroad boom, not by laying tracks or engines, but by marketing the most precious commodity of all: time, or at least timepieces — big ones. In the 1880s they set up a factory on Willoughby Street that hummed and clattered till the late 1950s, when the company moved to Lower Manhattan. It went out of business several years later.
In Self Winding’s heyday, its clocks kept time on New York skyscrapers and inside the United States Capitol. It also made Grand Central’s four-faced clock. And — though Metro-North no longer knows exactly when — it delivered the one that has been moved to the dining concourse.
“That clock was too big and too beautiful to put it in a museum,” Ms. Anders said. “And it still works fine.”
By JAMES BARRON NY TIMES
James Barron/The New York Times The old clock in its new space at Grand Central Terminal.
It was never the famous “meet-me-under-the-clock” clock at the old Biltmore Hotel. Nor is it the gilded four-faced centerpiece in the concourse of Grand Central Terminal. It was just a plain workaday clock that spent most of its life in a lower-profile nook at Grand Central answering one of two questions: Can I make the train, for people sprinting to catch one, or how late was it, for people sprinting off a train that had finally arrived.
Now it has a new home. It has been moved downstairs, to the dining concourse on the lower level. It is on the ceiling near the gates to Tracks 108 and 109.
Metro-North Railroad officials hope more people will see it there. Its old home was on the upper level, inside the gate at Track 19 — “above the block,” in railroad lingo. The block is where the tracks end.
Metro-North is sprucing up the area inside the gates on the upper level, with new terrazzo floors and energy-efficient lighting, said Marjorie Anders, a Metro-North spokeswoman. It was the new lighting that drove out the clock: The new fixtures blocked the clock’s round face.
The clock, in a square oak case, is a relic from the pre-digital days when Grand Central rolled out a red carpet — literally — for the 20th Century Limited. The clock’s face carries a name that railroaders remember, that of the Self Winding Clock Company of New York.
Once there were more than 50,000 Self Winding clocks across the country, all maintained by Western Union, according to Nancy Dyer, the librarian and archivist of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
“The time was picked up from the Naval Observatory in Washington and transmitted by Western Union to Self Winding clocks, which were in the train stations everywhere,” she said. “This was part of the standardizing of time before time zones and all that. Every railroad operated on their own time — if you were riding on the B&O, the lines ran on Baltimore time. if you were riding on the Pennsy” — the nickname for the Pennsylvania Railroad — “it was the time in Philadelphia. On the Central” — as the New York Central was often called — “it was the time in New York City.”
“It was important that everything was coordinated,” she said, “because if you had a single track, the trains could run into each other.”
Self Winding was the brainchild of two Brooklynites, Charles Pratt, the tycoon who founded Pratt Institute, and Henry Chester Pond, who already held a patent for an “electro-mechanical clock” when they started the company. Self Winding was looking to cash in on the railroad boom, not by laying tracks or engines, but by marketing the most precious commodity of all: time, or at least timepieces — big ones. In the 1880s they set up a factory on Willoughby Street that hummed and clattered till the late 1950s, when the company moved to Lower Manhattan. It went out of business several years later.
In Self Winding’s heyday, its clocks kept time on New York skyscrapers and inside the United States Capitol. It also made Grand Central’s four-faced clock. And — though Metro-North no longer knows exactly when — it delivered the one that has been moved to the dining concourse.
“That clock was too big and too beautiful to put it in a museum,” Ms. Anders said. “And it still works fine.”
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