New Haven Clock Company

Begun by a nephew making movements for a famous clockmaker, it ended up buying his business, and for decades its Hamilton Street factory poured out millions of clocks and watches a year.

Chauncey Jerome comes to New Haven

The story starts with Chauncey Jerome, a clockmaker who started out in Bristol, Connecticut. The factory's National Register nomination credits him with perfecting stamped-brass movements, which were cheaper and sturdier than wooden ones and could survive shipping overseas. It also says he his case works to New Haven in 1844 and began making movements there in 1845.

In 1851 Jerome's nephew Hiram Camp built a factory on Hamilton Street to make movements for his uncle's company. Camp then raised capital to form the New Haven Clock Company, which was incorporated on February 7, 1853, to make and sell clocks of every description.

The student buys out the master

Jerome's company did not last. Walk New Haven, a project of the city's Ethnic Heritage Center, says he lost control after a failed merger with a rival business controlled by P. T. Barnum, and the National Register nomination records that Jerome filed for bankruptcy on February 14, 1856. In April 1856 the New Haven Clock Company bought all the assets of the Jerome Manufacturing Company, including its machinery and buildings.

Jerome died in poverty in 1868. His original wooden factory burned in 1866 and was replaced by a larger brick building, the oldest part of the complex still standing on Hamilton Street.

Clocks and watches by the million

New Haven kept clocks at the center of its business but kept adding lines: pocket watches in 1880, wristwatches in 1915, self-starting electric clocks in 1929 and electric car clocks in the 1930s. Walter Camp, who ran the factory while coaching football at Yale, had become president by 1903, and the National Register nomination says the company was then making about 1.25 million clocks a year in more than 1,000 styles. Walk New Haven gives a smaller figure of 500,000 timepieces a year for the early 1900s. By the 1920s, the nomination says, it employed nearly 2,000 people and shipped around 3.5 million clocks and watches annually.

Not all of that history is happy. Walk New Haven records that during World War I the factory made watches with glow-in-the-dark radium dials, and the workers who painted them, known as the Radium Girls, suffered radiation poisoning. According to the nomination, in 1941 the company still employed about 1,500 people making 3 million timepieces a year, but alarm clock production stopped that year. In World War II it turned to fuses, timing relays and motors, producing 40 million anti-aircraft fuses in 1944 and 1945.

See also: pocket watches, wristwatches and other watch styles on OnlineClock.app.

Identifying and dating a New Haven clock

Check for the Jerome name as well as New Haven's. The Henry Ford holds a shelf clock from 1855 to 1860 that it catalogs as a New Haven Clock Company product, yet its label reads manufactured by Jerome and Co., New Haven, Conn. A Jerome label from New Haven is therefore not proof that the clock predates New Haven Clock's takeover.

Patent stamps help with later clocks. Another New Haven shelf clock at The Henry Ford, made between 1882 and 1900, has patent dates of 1879 on the bezel, 1881 on the pendulum bob and 1882 on the gong mount. A clock cannot be older than its latest patent date.

A clock marked New Haven Clock and Watch Company dates from 1946 or later, and an electric movement points to 1929 or later.

See also: common reasons an old clock stops ticking on OnlineClock.app.

Decline, and the factory's second life

Production at Hamilton Street ended in 1956, the year the company filed for bankruptcy, and its manufacturing equipment was auctioned in March 1960.

Buildings on the west side of Hamilton Street were demolished in the 1960s for Interstate 91, Walk New Haven says. The rest became a haven for artists, punk clubs and nightlife from the 1970s on, according to Connecticut Public, which reported in 2020 that the building was being renovated as artist and affordable housing. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.

Keep exploring

Sources

1. New Haven Clock Company Factory, National Register of Historic Places nomination (NPGallery)
2. New Haven Clock Company, Walk New Haven (Ethnic Heritage Center)
3. An icon of New Haven's manufacturing past celebrates its avant-garde revival, Connecticut Public
4. New Haven Clock Company Shelf Clock, 1855-1860, The Henry Ford
5. New Haven Clock Company Shelf Clock, 1882-1900, The Henry Ford