Crooks stop time at Museum of History and Industry
"It's the biggest, the tallest and I think the most beautiful street clock in the city," said Leonard Garfield, executive director at MOHAI.
The vandals sliced through the metal casing and gutted the clockworks from the base of the ornate, 15-foot-tall timepiece.
"These thieves really knew what they were doing," Garfield said.
He said the nearly 100-year-old clock has "seen World War One, it's seen the great depression, it's World War Two, it's seen all the protests and demonstrations, it made it through the WTO ten years ago."
Built in 1913, the clock stood near the corner of 4th and Pike in front of Carroll's Jewelry. It survived there for decades, but couldn't survive the holiday at the museum.
Sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning -- one of only two days a year the museum is closed -- the bandits stopped the clock.
"It's terrible to see something like that be stolen," Garfield said.
The original custom-made pendulum and mechanisms that keep the clock ticking were ripped out. Efforts will be made to replace the stolen parts, but replicas will diminish the clock's historical value.
"This is Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse climbing up the clock," Garfield said of a mouse character in the clock's base. "Unfortunately he's not going to get anywhere because his climbing mechanism is gone."
The museum is working with police and may offer a reward for the return of the stolen clockworks.
