I found this brass plaque advertising “Stacy Shown Jewelers” in an antique shop in Everett, Washington. It is heavy brass (maybe 20 pounds) and surprisingly big. It was originally on the base of a famous street clock in front of the Smith Tower in downtown Seattle.
The Smith Tower, of course, was built in 1914 to great fanfare and at the time was the tallest building west of the Mississippi (462 feet high with 38 stories).
But the real focus of this blog isn’t the Smith Tower. It’s the clock. Or clocks, plural.
Stacy Shown Jewelers advertising plaque where it originally rested.
At one point, there were at least 40 clocks like the one pictured below all over Seattle. The city was appropriately dubbed the “City of Clocks” by the local and national press of the time. A Jewish immigrant by the name of Joseph Mayer built almost all of them. He immigrated to Seattle in 1883 at the age of 15. By 1935, Mayer had made over 100 clocks in his Seattle workshop and a good number of them stood on the streets of Seattle.
Mayer Clock at 501 Pine Street in Seattle
The Seattle Times reported in 1930 that a person could see 16 street clocks standing on the corner of 4th & Pike and looking a block in each direction.
Historic 8-dial street clock located at Mayer Plaza in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
Most of the surviving clocks are inside Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. But there is still some Mayer clocks gracing the streets of Seattle as well as Bremerton, Anacortes, Aberdeen, Lacey and even San Francisco.
