NORTHAMPTON — After a 20-year absence from downtown, the former landmark Seth Thomas street clock has returned to Main Street.
This is the clock’s third home in its century-long, storied life. First installed in 1910 at the corner of Main Street and Strong Avenue — in front of what is now Local Burger — the 10-foot-high street clock was removed and stored in a Holyoke warehouse two decades ago, where it sat until the city bought it last year.
It now stands on the edge of the newly redesigned Pulaski Park.
On Thursday, Mayor David J. Narkewicz mirrored his predecessor Calvin Coolidge — who dedicated the clock in 1910 — by celebrating the homecoming of the “magnificently restored” timepiece.
The dark green clock’s light-up dial and gold embellishments were brought back to life by clock restorer Peter A. Nunes over the last seven months. Prior to the ceremony, onlookers gazed up as Nunes mounted the clock’s hands from atop scaffolding.
“I think it’s spectacular,” said Ward 4 City Councilor Gina-Louise Sciarra. The clock is another jewel in Northampton’s Pulaski Park heart, she said. “It feels like this section of the city has just come alive in a way that’s really lovely to see.”
Narkewicz, reading from vintage city records and newspaper clippings, said the clock’s life had a rocky beginning.
“The long controversy is now at an end,” he read from a 1910 newspaper brief about Coolidge’s endorsement of the clock’s construction permit.
There had been great concern in the city when Harry Daniels proposed erecting a clock in front of the men’s clothing store bearing his name at the corner of Strong Avenue and Main Street. People were worried that it would become a billboard and that it would not keep reliable time, Narkewicz said.
Coolidge’s permit stipulated that the clock bear no advertisements and be kept to standard time.
Today, the weekly task of winding the clock will be entrusted to a 14-year-old Williamsburg boy on his way home from Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School. Wayne Feiden, the city’s director of planning and sustainability, said he met the boy’s mother by chance and learned that he had been winding the Haydenville Congregational Church’s clock.
The city in 2015 bought the clock from retired businessman John Sutter for $20,000 using Community Preservation Act funds. Additional funds were spent on restoration. The clock, believed to have been made in 1904 in Connecticut, was purchased by Sutter from former city attorney Alan Scheinman in 1995 with plans to rehabilitate it and reinstall it in front of his store, Sutter’s of Northampton, which stood across from Pulaski Park.
But shortly after Sutter bought the clock, the then-owner of the property at 18 Main St., which Scheinman had sold separately from the clock, filed a legal challenge against Scheinman’s right to sell the clock. After that dispute was settled, Sutter spent a few years having the clock restored, but it was never reinstalled because he closed his jewelry store in 2001 and moved to California.
Nunes, of Peace Dale, Rhode Island, had to commission several reproduction parts to make the clock whole, including two cast-iron base doors, the decorative ornament at the top, both glass dials and the bezel around them and the weight to drive the movement.
Nunes last year said that according to one source, some 200 of the outdoor clocks were produced by Seth Thomas and about 125 survive.
Narkewicz on Thursday had an additional announcement concerning Pulaski Park: The second phase of construction at the downtown green space will begin on Monday.
That involves the creation of an “Overlook” area — softening the sharp drop-off between the park and the Roundhouse parking lot below — that will increase the park’s area by over 25 percent, Narkewicz said.
The Overlook will improve the park’s connection to the parking lot and adjacent New Haven-Northampton Rail Trail through an improved staircase and handicapped-accessible path, he said.
Narkewicz said he is excited about this second phase, which will also open up views of the Holyoke Range.
The project will be completed by MASS-WEST Construction Inc. of Granby at a cost of $965,000, funded by CPA money and a state grant. It is expected to be finished in May.
The park will remain open throughout construction, though the rear portion of it and a section of the Roundhouse lot will be fenced off.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com.