City Life

Downcity's Time Machine

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On the fifth floor of City Hall you’ll find the City Archives, the only municipal archive in the state. The area had once been a battery room, which generated electricity for City Hall and kept all of the building’s clocks on time. In the corner of the archives, in a cramped little room with a window overlooking Kennedy Plaza, is the device that from the 1890s through the 1970s would receive time signals from the Ladd Observatory.

The Ladd Observatory would get the time from Boston and rely that information to City Hall and, most importantly, Union Station “so the trains would run on time and wouldn’t collide with each other,” explains archivist Caleb Horton. “Once the time signals were sent here from the Ladd Observatory, people would go off of the time they saw at the train station and City Hall.” There was even a live-in janitor, tasked with maintaining the battery equipment and the clocks, who called the fifth floor home.

We may not need to rely on City Hall’s clocks to set our watches anymore, but the relics of those old systems remain as a reminder that even information as simple as the time was something of a luxury. 25 Dorrance Street. 

City Archives, City Hall, Boston, Providence, Kennedy Plaza, Battery Room, The Ladd Observatory, Providence Monthly, Tony Pacitti

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