ATHOL — The Athol Daily News recently spoke with the Paul Lieneck, architect for the Town Hall clock tower project, who cleared up some details related to the work being done on the clock itself. A recent report in the ADN was based on discussions town officials had had with members of the Memorial Hall Committee and other interested parties in early in the process of moving the project forward.
Lieneck confirmed reports regarding the replacement of the cupola housing the clock, but corrected information indicating that the original clock mechanism would be replaced by an electric system and parts of the old clock donated to the Historical Society. The original mechanism will in fact be refurbished and reinstalled. The only electric item to be installed is designed solely to re-wind the clock when necessary.
“Basically,” said Lieneck, “the clock faces, the differential, and all the gear works and the pendulum and the counterweight — essentially, the entire clock is being taken away for work. They’ve already done it; it’s been taken away in a very secure way and it’s going to St. Louis, I think it is, where they’re going to restore it. So, they are in the process of doing that now. That’s Americlock, Inc., which is doing that.
“Then they will bring it back after the replica cupola is in and reinstall it. The original faces — the original dials on the faces — will all be restored. They’ll make new hands, out of redwood, actually, which I thought was kind of cool. Then they’ll just reinstall it all.”
While the original mechanism for running the clock will be reinstalled, said Lieneck, it will occupy a slightly different location.
“They will put the gearworks down one floor so that it’s on the level of the part of the clock tower that has the windows in it, with the idea they can bring small groups of people up to look at that part of it. Climbing up to the inside of the clock face is going to be more difficult than it is now because there will not be stairs put in the replica cupola itself.”
The architect said the new configuration requires installation of a rod that extends two stories up from the gearworks. That rod will drive the differential, which allows time to be displayed on all four faces of the clock.
“We had a clock consultant come in from Maine,” Lieneck continued. “It was the Balzer Family Clock Works. They walked through the options with us. There was an option at one time of putting in electric motors, instead of the differential. But they decided to keep the clock historical, if you will, and not start to change it, mostly because the electric motors only last about 20 years. What they’ve got now doesn’t really have a time frame where it’s going to expire. I won’t say it’ll last forever but it’ll last a couple of lifetimes anyway.”
The only electric element of the gearworks will be the re-winding mechanism.
“Right now, somebody manually goes up to the base of the tower and cranks the gearworks back to retract the counterweight once a week, as long as they wind it up fully. The fully-wound clock will run seven days. Brian Brousseau is the one who winds the clock now.
“The Balzer family pointed out to us that at the time the clock was built, there was an electric winder available; they just didn’t put one on. What we’re going to do is replicate that 1922 version of the winder, which is electric. So, it will look like a component of the original clock and will wind the clock fully every week. So, like in the wintertime, somebody doesn’t have to climb up there and do it if they’re not around.”
Lieneck said that it will take about six months to fully restore the clock, not counting removal and reinstallation.
“(Americlock) is taking everything apart and fully cleaning all the pieces and putting it back together,” he said.
Lieneck said the timepiece in the clock tower “is referred to as an E. Howard Co. clock. Howard made a lot of clocks in New England, not only the tower clocks, but a lot of mantle clocks and grandfather-type clocks. Its significance is it was one of the last Howard clocks made before merging with another company shortly after this one was made.
“Their designs pretty much stayed true from beginning to the end. Just every once in a while, they would make an improvement. So, if you look at that way, we’ve got the best of the Howard clocks.”
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com