There are countless clocks counting down downtown—telling you the number of hours and minutes you have before your parking meter peters out, and flashing the number of seconds you have before cars start crossing your crosswalk. There are also clocks that count up—the polite old-fashioned sort that’ll go round and round just to give you the time.
Yale University Art Gallery keeps one ticking along its bridge above High Street (pictured fifth). Nearby, Harkness Tower’s four faces wear a timepiece apiece (first). Same goes for the tower over City Hall (fourth), the spire rising from Center Church on the Green (sixth) and another atop Criterion Cinemas (second).
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Meantime, a bunch of retired, locally crafted clocks, the oldest dating to 1845, are hanging out at the New Haven Museum (third), featured in its long-running exhibit From Clocks to Lollipops: Made in New Haven. They’re counting neither down nor up but back, to other times worth telling.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
