By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE – Time is on our side, shoppers. In fact, it’s on the south sidewalk of 86th Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues, There stands a 16-foot-tall clock tower that plays music at regular intervals, placed by the Bay Ridge 86th Street Business Improvement District (BID).

“It plays a huge number of musical tunes, from ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ to ‘Jingle Bells’ depending on the occasion,� said BID President John Logue, owner of the family-run Hinsch’s Ice Cream Parlor and Restaurant within earshot of the clock. “There are seasonal tunes and national holiday tunes, and popular selections that span the years.�

The impressive and ornate old-fashioned styled clock on a shiny black tower, at home in any village or town square, gives a quaint charm to the bustling commercial district and gives people a chance to whistle the tunes it plays as they dine and shop. With a three-foot-wide clock face, it is placed outside the area’s prime anchor store, the Century 21 Department Store, serving the public since the early 1960s. The clock has been in place since early summer, playing music on the hour, half-hour and quarter hours to the enjoyment of strollers, shoppers and storeowners. Children have been seen to smile and laugh with delight at the giant timepiece, a gift to them from the BID as part of its street beautification project.

The BID had been seeking a street clock tower for some time (excuse the pun) but it had to prove first that there was a clock tower in the area on the avenue sometime in the past. Logue had explained at BID meetings that such a clock once stood outside the old Brevoort Savings Bank at 447 86th Street in comparatively recent memory. The bank became a Crosslands Savings Bank in the mid-1980s and is now an HSBC Bank.

‘We Need Proof of an Earlier Clock,’ DOT Says

But the City Department of Transportation required a photograph as proof of the old clock tower’s existence, Logue explained during a recent visit to Hinsch’s. The DOT is in charge of what is termed “street furniture,� sidewalk items such as benches, kiosks, planters, newsstands and bus shelters.

Through the research efforts of a local weekly newspaper a photo of the Brevoort Bank clock was found in its archives, just the photographic evidence necessary to bring the new clock to life. However, initially the DOT, despite the proof, denied the BID clock request because of the 36-inch-wide clock face, since they were limited to a 24-inch width.

The BID’s board of directors, said Logue, contended that such wide-face clocks were in fact placed around the city, and they cited as an example such a clock at a corner of Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope.

Such large street clocks were once all over the city as it grew through the 19th century, a carryover of Old World European ambience brought in by immigrants. In the legendary 14th Century story “Pied Piper of Hamlin� the hamlet of Hamlin devoted its energy, time and work to a clock tower with movable mechanical figures in a government competition with other towns. Such clocks are a late medieval era tradition, now alive and tick-tocking away in 21st century Bay Ridge.

The 86th Street clock was bought by the BID at a cost of almost $25,000, BID officials said, from the clock-making Verin Company in Ohio. Atop the clock face on both sides are the words, “86 Business District.�

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