The chimes won’t ring at midnight — or at the top of any hour in downtown Columbus for several days.
That’s because the clock at the Bartholomew County Courthouse is broken — and will likely stay that way for a short time.
After the hands on the clock at Third and Washington streets stopped moving Wednesday night, county maintenance director Rick Trimpe made the steep climb up to the top of the clock tower.
He discovered that a small motor had burned up, causing all the gears associated with the mechanism to melt, Bartholomew County commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said. When asked what might have caused the breakdown, both Trimpe and Kleinhenz said it was likely age.
A firm called the Tower Clock Co. in South Charleston, Ohio, which specializes in repairing these types of clocks, has been called in to make the repairs. The company is owned by Phil Wright, who has serviced the Bartholomew County Courthouse clock for more than 25 years. Records show Wright last restored the clock dials in 1998.
Current estimates indicate repairs to the clock at the 145-year-old courthouse won’t be made for up to two weeks, Kleinhenz said.
“We know everybody looks at that clock, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” he said.
In April 2013, Wright sent a letter to the county commissioners offering to provide a quote for restoration of the courthouse clock. In that letter, he also provided some information about its background.
“If you could put a price tag on that particular clock (a #4 E. Howard tower clock), it would be somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000,” he said during an 2013 interview. “Believe me, it’s pretty rare.”
Only one other of the 17 #4 tower clocks is still believed to be in existence — located in Lafayette. But the Lafayette clock is much younger than Bartholomew County’s, according to Wright.
However, Bartholomew County’s clock is not the original one installed when the courthouse was opened Dec. 29, 1874, Wright said.
While mechanisms have been updated over the past century-and-a-half, there have not been any equipment updates or replacements to the clock in the past several years, Trimpe said.
