Columbia has two iconic clocks downtown. This man has been caring for them for 50 years

Columbia’s Main Street bustles with state employees walking to lunch, students shuffling in and out of their apartments, visiting relatives, prospective hires, panhandlers, landscapers and more. Tim Sease makes sure whatever is happening, it’s happening on time.

Almost every week for the last 50 years, Sease has been at the corner of Main and Hampton streets, winding the century-old Sylvan Clock that has steadfastly marked the passing of time in Columbia since 1906.

“It’s main thing is to just deliver time,” which it does well, Sease said.

The clock, and another one like it down the road on Washington Street, have been fixtures downtown through development booms and economic slumps, busy years and lean ones.

Sease has been winding the clocks since 1974 or 1975, he can’t quite remember. He said he’s seen Main Street undergo dramatic changes in that time, and the rest of the city with it.

How Columbia’s clocks came to be

The Sylvan Brothers, Gustaf and Johannes, opened their Hampton Street jewelry store in 1905, when the city was still developing. They purchased the large clock from the famous Seth Thomas Clock Company the next year and situated it outside their front door. The store is still standing, and has been an anchor amid the upheaval and revival of Main Street over the years.

There are Seth Thomas clocks all over the country. The company even helped build the famous clock in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station. But they only made about 70 four-faced street clocks, two of which are in downtown Columbia. But the Columbia clocks are more rare than that. The Seth Thomas company made just five clocks like it, the other three are in Boston, New Orleans and San Francisco, according to the Library of Congress.

Local developer Richard Burts, who has stewarded several historic properties in Columbia, purchased the Sylvan’s building in February and is in the process of having the clock recognized as a historic landmark.

Getting into winding the clocks

Sease got the job winding the clock after another longtime clock-winder passed him the torch. He started working at Sylvan’s Jewelers in the late 1960s as a watch repairman after getting the chance to study the trade in high school and he bemoaned the quality of modern time-keeping.

“The quality that’s in the timepieces being made today is very poor in most cases,” he said. But the Sylvan clock is resolute, and Sease expects it to keep ticking for another 50 years. He credits his own handiwork as one factor in the clock’s longevity.

He left Sylvan’s in the 1990s to start his own watch repair business, but he kept winding the clocks.

Once a week, Sease opens a hatch at the base of the roughly 21-foot tall clock and pulls out a lever hidden inside. He affixes the lever to a metal crank and winds. A 135-pound weight inside the clock starts to rise. Over the next seven days, the weight will slowly fall four feet inside the clock, then will need to be wound up again to start its latest descent. Sease is prompt, so the clock rarely loses time. But there have been occasions when Sease has been chided by passersby who said the clock wasn’t on time when they needed it.

The clock-cranking industry

The clock is almost entirely cast iron, other than some brass fixtures inside. The mechanisms are all original, meaning they’re the same gears and pulleys that have been counting the seconds in Columbia for the past century.

The face of the clock is adorned with Roman numerals, the Sylvan name painted in gold and lions’ heads protrude in a string around the clock. The lions’ heads are hinged and can be pushed into the clock’s interior for Sease to service the gears, which he does once a year.

Winding the clocks each week has also given Sease a routine conversation starter with people downtown.

“A lot of people associate you with the clock,” he said. “This thing is always on someone’s mind.”

Sease expects to continue winding the historic clocks for as long as his health allows. But when it is time for him to pass the torch, he doesn’t know who will pick it up.

“It’s practically, it’s almost dead,” he said of the industry, adding that very few young people are learning about antique watch and clock repair. In the last few years he estimates the number of full-time watch repairmen has dwindled to just a handful. “As they say, I’m a dying breed.”

As Sease returns the crank to the chamber inside the old clock, he gives it a tap and promises it will outlive anything modern – don’t get him started on digital clocks.

Sease is, of course, wearing an analog watch on his wrist that ticks off the seconds in perfect time.

He guarantees it.