Journey to the heart of the Hayes Hall clock

Sunlight falls through tall arched windows, illuminating a dusty concrete floor and, at the center of it, the orderly assemblage of gears, parts and levers that forms the ticking mechanical heart of the Hayes Hall clock.

Horologists — experts in the science of keeping time — call this wondrous collection of components the “movement.” Inside Hayes, this mechanism drives the hands of the clock and operates its chimes. The apparatus is in constant, steady motion when the clock is alive.

But today, on the morning of Oct. 13, all is silent.

The clock was shut down in 2011 as UB began an ambitious renovation of Hayes. Now, five years later, clock expert Chuck Roeser is on site with a crew of two — himself and one other worker — to clean, oil and restart the device.

The work will take several days. They will dust the clockwork. They will adjust the numbered dials to tell the correct time. They will test the entire 90-year-old machine to make sure everything is running smoothly.

When they're done, the hands of the venerable old clock will turn again, marking the passage of seconds, minutes, days and ultimately years. Each quarter hour, the old bronze bells in the tower will chime, flooding the South Campus with their stately and beautiful sound.

“I am the voice of life; I call you: Come and learn.”

So reads the inscription on the smallest of the four bells that form the Westminster chime at the top of the Hayes Hall clock tower. The words were written by Cuthbert W. Pound, former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, and to see them, you have to climb.

In years and decades past, the journey up was arduous: People who made the trek use words like “shimmy” and “slither” to describe it, and recall old ladders not made for the faint of heart.

The path today is easier. From the fourth floor of Hayes, a yellow ship’s ladder leads to the clock tower’s first level, where sets of mammoth weights rise and fall, setting the clock in motion.

From here, a ladder leads to the room housing the clock mechanism, whose body is painted a jeweled forest green and striped with yellow and black. Levers on one side of the device are joined to silver cables that reach skyward and are attached, on their other end, to heavy hammers that ring the bells.

The journey to the bell tower follows the cables. You go up a flight of wide, spiraled wooden stairs, then up another ladder, which opens onto an otherworldly room whose walls consist largely of the 7-plus-foot-tall circular dials of the clock. The room feels massive, whimsical and strange, an eerie light shining through the clock’s translucent faces.

From here, you make the final ascent up a sturdy ladder, through a narrow trap door and onto a cozy wooden platform housing the four bells.

They are huge but majestic: Each weighs between 400 and 1,800 pounds, and carries an inscription befitting a place of learning.

The words on the largest, written by Cuthbert W. Pound, read: “All truth is one. In this light may science and religion labor here together for the steady evolution of mankind from darkness to light; from prejudice to tolerance; from narrowness to broadmindedness.”

William McDonnell, associate dean for the School of Architecture and Planning, which will occupy Hayes Hall when it reopens in 2016, marveled at the beauty he found when he conquered his fear of heights and climbed into the bell tower for the first time on Oct. 13.

“I felt inspired when I read the inscriptions on the bells. In particular, I was struck by the inscription on the largest bell,” he said. “I feel proud to be part of something that fosters diversity, inclusion and knowledge across the spectrum; proud to have a small role in something bigger, something that has and will continue to transform and impact our society in significant ways for years to come; proud to be part of UB.”

On Oct. 15, as the renovation of Hayes Hall neared completion, the clock returned to life.

Inside the tower, the pendulum that helps keep time swung from side to side. Gears spun. Every quarter hour, the clock’s levers tugged on the skyward-reaching cables, activating the hammers and striking the bells.

Across the South Campus, students, faculty and neighbors heard the chimes ring again.

The clock is “like our Big Ben — the Big Ben of University Heights,” said Yvonne James-Brown, a freelance teaching artist in dance who lives in the neighborhood. “I’m glad to see all the work that has been put into the restoration of the South Campus. It’s a very good thing.”

Brown studied at UB in the 1970s and 80s, earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in education. In the age before cell phones, she remembers the clock helping her keep track of her mornings in Goodyear Hall.

“It was wonderful to wake up to the bells,” she said. “They chimed — it was every 15 minutes — and I got to memorize the different chimes for the hour, the half hour and every 15 minutes, which for a freshman trying to organize themselves was a good thing.”

There are many memories of the bells. Richard Yencer, an instructional support technician for the School of Architecture and Planning and director of its Materials and Methods Shop, is now retired. But colleagues in the school recall how he used to be responsible for winding the clock, traversing to the tower weekly to complete the task, whether it was sweltering hot or frigidly cold. The clock is now wound electrically, making this duty obsolete.

Then there was university maintenance worker Kenneth Cott, who reportedly rang the bells by hand during the funeral procession of UB’s ninth chancellor, Clifford C. Furnas, a former assistant secretary of defense and Olympic runner who died suddenly in 1969. Cott’s tribute was described in the spring/summer 2003 edition of the UB’s alumni magazine, then called UB Today.

The chimes’ return marks an important milestone in the renovation of Hayes Hall and the development of UB’s storied South Campus, which will remain a center of education and research after the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences moves downtown in 2017.

The clock tower, in all its whimsy and wonder, is an iconic university and community landmark. President Satish K. Tripathi put it this way: “Just as the famous clock tower is in many ways the symbolic face of our university, its chimes have been UB’s voice for decades.”

To be specific, the ringing of the bells marks the revival of a tradition that began 87 years ago.

According to the University Archives, the Hayes Hall tower clock was a gift from longtime University Council member Kate Robinson Butler, wife of Edward H. Butler, president of The Buffalo Evening News. Kate Robinson Butler became president and publisher of The News after her husband’s death and also served as president of WBEN Inc.

The bells were originally set in operation on the evening of July 19, 1928, according to the archives.

In announcing the gift that year, former UB Chancellor Samuel P. Capen said, “From time immemorial the sound of the bells has been associated with all of the supreme events of human life … No one can resist their appeal, which is direct to our deepest emotions.”

The chimes have not been in continuous operation since 1928, but the Hayes renovation aims to make them a permanent fixture. The clock, manufactured by famed clockmaker E. Howard & Co., was lovingly restored by Roeser’s company, Essence of Time. The job included a historically correct repainting of the timepiece’s movement and the repair of many parts.

The clock is an uncommon treasure, Roeser said, noting that the company that built it was “always known for making the finest mechanical clocks.”

“This is one of the rare clocks that is still original,” he said. “Its design is about as original right now as when the clock left the factory. Most all of these clocks, back in the 1940s and 50s, were automated with a motor.”

While the Hayes Hall clock can now be electrically wound, it does not have a motor driving the gears, Roeser said. You could — if you wanted — still operate it completely by hand.

The clock’s historically preserved mechanism makes restarting the timepiece a wondrously tactile experience, as Roeser demonstrates one October morning.

He places his hand on the pendulum, moves it gently to one side and lets go. It swings. The gears turn. And just like that, the whimsical old clock is alive again.