5,000 Miles in 142 Years

First installed on a busy street in Illinois, an Ansonia street clock—nicknamed “Quincy”—led a nomad’s life until it arrived at the National Watch & Clock Museum in 2014.

Originally manufactured by the Ansonia Clock Co. of Brooklyn, New York, Quincy made her public debut in 1884 outside the Heinze and Rosenthal Jewelry Store in Quincy, Illinois. Over the next several decades, three other Quincy jewelers also displayed the clock in front of their shops. By 1920, Quincy had traveled to Memphis, Missouri. There she endured nearly 50 years of Midwest winters  and, unfortunately, suffered severe damage during a particularly brutal snowstorm.

What might have been the end for Quincy instead became a new beginning. In 1969, Charles Bottom, a private collector in Los Alamos, New Mexico, purchased the clock, restored it, and set it up in his backyard. Quincy happily remained there (sunny and dry!) until 1984, when Stan Good of Tampa, Florida, bought Quincy and installed her in front of his clock repair shop.

Shortly after Stan’s death in 2013, Quincy made her final journey. With assistance from Tower and Street Clock Chapter 134, the NAWCC purchased Quincy in 2014 and moved her to the National Watch & Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania. At long last—after roughly 5,000 miles of travel and more than a century later—Quincy will soon have a permanent home in a newly built extension of the Public Time gallery at the Museum!