Timepiece notebook: Monroe County courthouse clock has no hands for now, waits on a new gearbox

The Nat U. Hill Room of the Monroe County courthouse, where the county council and county commissioners hold their meetings is an impressive space. Its high, domed ceiling and ornate woodwork from decades ago suggest it’s a place where important business gets done.

But for the last few weeks, the room has cued up an obvious soundtrack to play inside the heads of those who gather there: the rock band Chicago’s 1970 Top 10 hit, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”

That’s because the ornate clock mounted high above the dais on the room’s west wall has no hands.

The missing hands are just the visible part of the problem. A replacement motor gearbox has been ordered after the mechanism stopped working, according to Richard Crider, who is the county government’s building and fleet director. Cincinnati-based Verdin, which services large clocks and bell systems, is working with the county on the repair.

The meeting-room clock is a standalone system. It is separate from the courthouse tower mechanism, which runs the four exterior clock faces visible from the outside around the square. And those two systems are separate from the timer that controls the courthouse bell. The three timepieces have to be synchronized separately.

The clock has some history behind its face. Crider showed The B Square a photograph of the back of its marble dial, which has a handwritten notation reading “June 1908.” That matches the year of the building’s construction. Other penciled markings offer possible evidence of earlier work on the mechanism.

Crider says there is no firm date yet for the gearbox replacement.

Until then, even if you can’t tell the time from the Nat U. Hill clock, as the song says, “We’ve all got time enough to cry.”