WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – You won’t hear the bell at First Baptist Church in Watertown for several weeks, but that’s good news.
The clock tower has been a landmark in downtown Watertown since the late 1800s. Its bell distinctly rings on the hour and the half hour.
But, that won’t be the case for the next few weeks.
“The clock has been for quite a while running well, but we want to keep it running well,” said Jeffrey Smith, senior pastor, First Baptist Church.
Although the tower sits in the church, the city owns the rights to it – designating a local resident as the clock master last year.
The clock master helped to restore it back to life after it had been offline for several years. In his recent routine maintenance of the clock, he noticed some parts needed to be restored so it could continue to function as it should.
“He shut the clock down and he took a lot of the motor out of it and some of the other parts and he is going to send it to California to get fixed,” said Smith.
Since the clock has been down, Smith says he has been fielding several calls a day – many people asking why the bell isn’t ringing anymore.
But, he wants to reassure people that this is only temporary. The service that is being done is helping to lengthen the life of the machine.
“When the clock is down, it is almost like we are asleep or gone, but we are not gone. We are just getting it so it will carry on for another maybe hundred, two, three hundred years,” said Smith.
Smith says repairs could take up to 8 weeks, but when it’s done in the new year, the old clock will have a new lease on life.
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