What time is it? Unfortunately, if you were to take a look at the clock tower at the top of 128 Pierrepont, you would not get a reliable answer. Part of the original design by George B. Post, the clock tower has been a part of the building since its construction between the years of 1878 and 1881. However, the clock tower was never installed with an actual mechanism for the clock and has therefore never worked. The construction of 128 Pierrepont proved to be incredibly expensive, and the original board members of the Long Island Historical Society debated on various aspects of what to keep or get rid of in their plans for the historical society building in order to cut spending. One way they were able to do so was to cut the expense on the clock mechanism entirely and simply keep the clock face as an ornamental part of the façade.
During the building renovation from 1999 to 2003—from where the pictured building plan is from—it was decided to simply restore the clock face, since installation of a clock mechanism would be a huge undertaking in and of itself on top of the expense. The clock will continue to simply be a decorative element of the building as we head into the future (and will therefore be rendered useless for any Doc Browns and Marty McFlys hoping to utilize a clock mechanism as a conductor for electricity for time travel purposes).
The Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Archive Project is generously funded by the Leon Levy Foundation.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal of Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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