MORGANTOWN – A lot of folks know Charles McEwuen, the proprietor of Tanner’s Alley Leather and Design Studio, as a keystone of Morgantown’s downtown business community for the last five decades.
But few likely know he was once High Street’s unofficial timekeeper.
The timely tale was told Wednesday as a crowd gathered in front of the historic Garlow Building to witness the unveiling of the restored post clock that has stood watch at the location in some form or fashion for the last century.
McEwuen knows it well.
“I used to maintain the time when it came time to adjust the clocks forward and back. Of course, the fall back was easy, because you just turn it off, but the spring ahead … It had a fast forward, which was optimistic. It took a half hour to get an hour advance. I’d come down and put it on fast forward, go back to my store, do some things, come back down and check it. I wasted a lot of time, honestly, but I wanted to make sure I got it started at just the right time,” he said.
Wednesday, it turns out, was just the right time.
“It’s nice to see it working again. It’s not that anybody really needs to see what time it is. Everybody’s got a cellphone attached to them. But a working clock shows that we have an active, vibrant downtown with people who care. I think that’s the message it sends.”
And that’s the message it was intended to send according to Mark Downs, part of the ownership group that purchased the Garlow Building about a year ago.
April 14, 2027 will mark 100 years since the building was reconstructed in the wake of a fire that devastated the east side of High Street between Fayette and Wall streets.
“Our plan is to renovate. We’re renovating this entire building. So, we thought it was kind of logical to do the clock as a kind of first indication – call it a beacon, or a starting gun – that the renovation of the building was about to happen.”
Downs turned to Morgantown MacGyver, and all around Mr. Fixit, Scott Frederick, who pulled the clock down last year, took it apart, and got it running again for about $300.
It’s believed that the clock has been at that location since about 1951 in its current form.
It’s marked “Lilly’s Crown Jewelers” today. That wasn’t always the case.
“There’s been a clock in this location for about 100 years,” Downs said. “That’s important to me, because good cities don’t have to choose between preservation and progress. The clock’s restored. This old building is going to get renovated. And it’s all part of the revitalization of downtown Morgantown.”
