Submitted Photo Brad Wangler, right, poses with two Rugby Electric workers in front of the clock at Merchants Bank Park.

A familiar landmark from Rugby’s past has reappeared near the spot where it once stood for several decades thanks to hundreds of volunteer hours and a generous sum of money raised by Rugby’s Prairie Village Museum.

Museum board members and volunteers installed the clock just in time to light it up after sunset on Dec.

Rugby’s Brad Wangler, owner of Rugby Electric, worked to modernize the clock’s wiring inside of its face.

Local history

He was just one of several local volunteers and specialists in antique clocks from several states away to tackle the four-year-long project.

Wangler said the clock had stood in front of Lien’s Jewelry Store until the store closed in 1988. After that, the Lien family donated the clock to the museum.

The Lien family opened their store in the former Johnson’s Jewelry Store in 1938. Johnson’s Jewelry store had owned the clock since about 1905, according to Wangler.

Lien’s Jewelry Store had moved three times in Rugby, with all of its locations near the intersection of Main Avenue and Second Street.

The clock now stands in Merchants Bank Park, just a few feet away from one of Lien’s Jewelry Store’s former locations.

Museum Board Vice President Steve Dockter said the clock was unique. “It was called a Brown Street Clock,” he said.

“These clocks used to be purchased by jewelry stores back in the day,” Wangler said. “I was doing some research on it and they used to sell them brand new for at the turn of the century for $175.”

Wangler said Brown Street Clocks, manufactured in Pennsylvania, were popular advertising tools for jewelry stores. The clocks once dotted the country.

The idea to restore and place the clock came to museum board members a few years ago, when they saw how it had deteriorated over the past decades.

“This project started about four years ago, roughly,” Museum Board President Dave Bednarz said. “We had a deal going at the museum,” Bednarz said of the board. “Dr. Seiler, Steve Dockter, and Dennis Miller, we looked at this clock at the museum and decided to do something about it.”

The clock had stood at the museum for a few years, then the museum had placed it in storage.

“It was laying on a trailer on the back behind everything,” said Seiler.

Project begins

The museum began an effort to raise $10,000 to restore the clock. Bednarz said Merchants Bank, St. Michel Furniture and Seiler made generous contributions to the fundraiser.

“I first got involved in this in January of 2019,” Wangler said. “And at that point, it had been going for at least a couple of years. It seemed like things were kind of stalling out.”

“The thing people don’t understand is there’s an insane amount of coordination to putting something like this together,” he added.

The coordinated effort involved volunteers like Steve Nelson of Highway 2 Collision, who donated his time to resurface and repaint the clock’s body, plus re-weld and repair decorative metal work above the clock’s face.

It involved shipping parts to a clock restoration company in Missouri.

“There are just one or two clock restorers here in the country,” Wangler said. “There’s not a lot of people who do this.”

Wagner said restoring and modernizing the clock’s inner workings, replacing the glass on its face and restoring the clock’s outside required precise coordination from several craftspeople.

“Like the people who made the glass faces, they needed the dimensions of the clock. And the clock being more than a century old, their manufacturing process wasn’t like it is today,” Wangler explained.

“So, there were many times when we had to get dimensions of the inner side of the glass face and the bezel size to fit the glass and the components that went into the inside workings of the clock to make it all come together, and time it with painting,” he added.

“Because we don’t want to paint it only to find out we need to drill more holes or do more welding or disassemble something and cause rework on the back side of it,” he said.

Dockter said a Jamestown painter attempted to restore the clock’s face, but found the 100-plus-year-old face too brittle and fragile to work with.

“The faces that are in there now are more of a replica of what was and correct to what it should be,” Wangler said. “They added some (gold painting) accents around the outer edges and it’s obviously got Roman numerals and standard time written across the inside.”

Most of the clock’s body and outside are original, but parts such as a door and part of its metal work are new, Wangler noted.

Wangler said he worked to replace the clock’s old mechanical inner parts with a system that synchronizes with the NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock in Boulder, Colorado. That clock sets the time standard for the United States of America.

The restored clock, which runs on electricity, can reset itself in the event of a power outage, he added.

“We moved kind of slow, but now, we’re glad to see the new facing on, and we’ve got a beautiful bell that we’re going to put out front, too,” Bednarz said. “This was something we thought would be appropriate for Merchants Bank Park.”

A new home

After each part of the project finished, the group assembled the clock at Highway 2 Collision for a trial run. With the clock in working order, the group loaded it up on a skid steer for a slow trip across town.

The clock’s 800-pound weight and 15-foot height presented yet another challenge for the team.

Dockter said as his group made its way across town he saw a utility truck from Otter Tail Power Company pass by.

He called the utility company to ask for help. Rugby Otter Tail employees loaded the clock on their truck and then used the truck’s bucket to install the clock.

The group assembled the clock onsite at Merchants Bank Park, fitting it into a cement foundation poured by Rugby contractor Rick Larson.

Although evening temperatures plummeted, Rugby residents came out to greet the clock installers.

“It was fun after the clock was lit up,” Wangler said. “People were stopping by and honking their car horns. People were getting out of their cars and taking pictures.”

Nelson also visited the installation site. “It was nice to have him up there,” Wangler said.

“It looks great with the Christmas tree in the background,” Dockter said.

“Anything we can do to enhance the downtown’s look, we’re glad to help,” Wangler said.

Wangler said the board spoke with Museum Executive Director Shane Engeland about placing the clock on a national registry for Brown Street Clocks.

“There are eight states in the upper Midwest around North Dakota that don’t have clocks like this registered,” Wangler said. “I sent Shane the link to register it.”

The board members said they hoped the clock would add another attraction for visitors to Rugby to see and give residents another reason to be proud of their community.

“We didn’t just go get it somewhere,” Dockter said of the clock. “It originated here in Rugby.”