The Clock Tower of Waterbury

The most recognizable landmark in Waterbury is not a factory or a church. It is a clock tower two hundred forty feet tall that rises above a railroad station, and it was copied from a medieval tower in Siena, Italy, built in the thirteen hundreds.

Waterbury Union Station opened in nineteen oh nine, designed by the celebrated New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, the same architects responsible for the original Penn Station in Manhattan. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad commissioned the building, and at its peak the station handled sixty-six passenger trains per day. Waterbury was a hub in the dense northeastern rail network, and the station reflected the railroad's ambition to give its passengers architecture worthy of the journey.

The clock tower, however, was not part of the original design. It came later, about a year after construction began, at the insistence of a railroad president. McKim, Mead and White were hired again to add it, and they looked across the Atlantic for inspiration. The Torre del Mangia in Siena, a slender medieval campanile rising beside the Palazzo Pubblico, became their model. The Waterbury tower adapted that Gothic silhouette in American brick and stone, and Seth Thomas, the Connecticut clockmaker, installed the four clock faces at the top, each dial measuring sixteen feet across, the largest in the region.

The station served passengers for decades before the decline of intercity rail travel hollowed out its purpose. Eventually the building was converted into the offices of the Republican-American, Waterbury's daily newspaper. The tower still keeps time over the city, a medieval clock imported to Connecticut, built because a railroad president wanted something memorable at the end of the line.