Wednesday, September 15, 1999
Clock moved to park setting
Landmark at Heritage Village
BY WALT SCHAEFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SHARONVILLE — For 98 years, husbands and wives, girls and their beaus, and families on downtown shopping forays met beneath the clock on Fourth Street in front of McAlpin's Department Store.
The 1,270-pound timepiece stood 16 feet tall and told countless passersby if they were early or late.
Last week, a crane hoisted the McAlpin's clock atop its stand at a new location — in front of the old Chester Park train station — as it became another piece of area history being preserved at Historic Southwest Ohio's Heritage Village Museum in Sharon Woods here.
“Before the break up of the (McAlpin's/Mercantile stores) companies (in 1998), David Huhn, and his wife (Skip) decided they wanted to salvage that clock. They did not want it trashed,” said Bill Moss, former purchasing agent at Mercantile's former corporate headquarters in Fairfield. Mr. Huhn was president of the McAlpin's group of stores under Mercantile Stores Inc.
“About two years ago, we set aside the money to restore the clock” — well before Mercantile Stores Inc. was acquired by Arkansas-based Dillard's department stores.
The downtown McAlpin's was closed in 1996. The clock standing at the Heritage Village Museum was the fifth clock to stand outside McAlpin's. It was made in 1992 by The Verdin Co., Over-the-Rhine — Cincinnati clock and bell manufacturers since 1842. The McAlpin's clock became the Verdin Co.'s 150th anniversary year design, said company spokesman Denny Mitchell.
“It is an icon to me,” said Christine Doverspike, former McAlpin's warehouse manag er. “I grew up with Shillito's, Pogue's, Gidding-Jenny and McAlpin's — (all part of) retailing history in Cincinnati. The clock is a symbol of that era.”
Weather and traffic mishaps claimed earlier clocks — the first was made in 1901, and others followed: 1930s, 1950s and 1976.
“We have stories of people who met under the clock and started dating each other, got married, had families; stories of people who met there every day,” said Skip Huhn. “The clock has significance ... to all of Cincinnati, and we did not forget that.”
Jon Scharf, director of Heritage Village, said the clock “is living history. We have placed it outside the train station because it, too, is a building with living history.
“Those associated with the (13) other buildings we have in the village are long in their graves. This is a nice thing for visitors because they can tell stories — recall things about the clock that happened to them.”
Historic Southwest Ohio is a nonprofit group dedicated to historic preservation. The group operates the village and the John Hauck House on Dayton Street in Cincinnati's West End.
Mr. Scharf said he also hopes to rekindle history be setting the clock at “Local Time.” Before Union Terminal, there were seven train stations in Cincinnati all operating on their own clocks set to Local Time — noon, based on when the sun does not cast a shadow.
With the terminal, trains had to run on a fixed area-wide schedule. Eastern Standard Time was adopted, Mr. Scharf said.
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