Pioneer Square clock has watched over the city from several vantage points

IMAGINE NOT KNOWING what time it is. This is hardly a problem these days, when everyone has a phone in their hand or a watch on their wrist that constantly reminds them, to the minute, how far the day has progressed. We know immediately whether we are late or early for something, or even if it’s time to end an intermittent fast or grab lunch. But 100 or so years ago, it was possible to live an entire day with no idea what o’clock it was because many could not afford watches, and the cellphone was just a dream hinted at in the writings of H.G. Wells or Jules Verne.

But people still had to get to work on time or keep appointments or catch trains. And for that, they could pop into a storefront and ask the clerk or beg the time off a passing well-heeled stranger. Or, if you were lucky to be near one, you could walk a block or two and check a public street clock, those often-ignored relics that grace modern streets with their vintage quaintness well after their necessity has vanished.

Downtown Seattle has one such clock located at the appropriately central intersection of First and Main (1st Avenue South and South Main Street, that is) in a stretch of Pioneer Square comprised of blocks of historic brick buildings. The Earl Layman Street Clock is a handsome Victorian-looking specimen crafted from cast iron and accented with gold, standing across the street from the Bread of Life Mission. One imagines the passage of time the clock has seen since its establishment in 1907, watching the city grow and change. Pioneer Square has gone from central business district to historic preservation zone to rundown, dangerous near-ruin. Perhaps the clock has been patiently waiting, hoping the city’s downtown resurgence will bring its longtime home back to life.

One can only imagine all that, though, because it’s not quite true. For one thing, the clock, old though it is, has stood in its present spot only since 1984. It was installed that year by Historic Seattle and named for the city’s first historic preservation officer, Earl Drais Layman, who served from 1975 to 1982. Layman was instrumental in saving many of the buildings that give Pioneer Square its character from the kind of destruction that time often wreaks on a city’s beautiful old places.

Before that — as the clock’s somewhat confusing plaque states — the clock stood at 4th Avenue in front of Young’s Credit Jewelers (street clocks were often associated with jewelers) until 1967, when it was eventually removed to the backyard of the family who bought the business, the Blacks. While the clock still stood, patriarch Dean Black and his family supposedly drove into town once a week for years to wind it. When they took it home, it sat idle until it was rediscovered by Historic Seattle and remounted in Pioneer Square.

There is also some controversy about the date the clock was erected. The plaque states 1907, but Rob Ketcherside, local historian and author of the book “Lost Seattle,” says that, according to archival municipal documents (to wit: street use permits about street clocks), the clock actually dates from 1922. (An erroneous newspaper article from the 1950s is supposedly to blame for the error.) And, he says, it was installed at the original location of Young’s Credit Jewelers on 3rd Avenue until it was moved to their newer location at 4th Avenue in 1928.

In his informative blog post on the topic of Seattle’s many street clocks (https://ba-kground.com/pikes-forest-of-street-clocks/) Ketcherside states that the clock is one of 100 or so produced by Seattle-based Joseph Mayer & Brothers Street Clock Company. The company was responsible for many of Seattle’s other extant street clocks, making the Earl Layman clock one of a distinguished clan in what was once known as the “City of Clocks.”

The Earl Layman Street Clock has lived a far more itinerant life than the average historical marker. But as anyone beginning to feel the pinch of age knows, the passage of time inevitably brings change. Those who want to last have to adapt, adjust and find a new purpose in perhaps a new place to beat away the settling dust of irrelevancy. And even if we don’t need old street clocks to tell us what time it is anymore, they still serve as a reminder of the poignancy of time itself, particularly relevant to those of us made of less solid stuff than brick and iron.