Biography

~ BIOGRAPHY ~

(Updated May 2010)

James Rodgers Jr. (1803-1877). Rodgers was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Family tradition states that he first trained under his father, James Rodgers Sr., as a carriage maker. It seems, however, that that sort of “wheel making” was not for him and so he chose a different path. He studied clock-making, presumably in Aberdeen (the granite city), where he learned the craft that would serve him so well during the remainder of his life.

He traveled to America in 1822 and eventually settled on New York City as the place to ply his trade. He first appears as a watchmaker on Chatham Street that year. By 1828 Longworth’s New York City Directory shows Rodgers at 410 Broadway and listed as “James Rodgers Jr.,” watchmaker. It is important to note that he is specifically mentioned as “Jr.,” as it is believed that his father came to America and joined in his son’s enterprise here (His father may be the same James Rodgers buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn on October 14, 1856, lot 4951, section 57).

The first noteworthy event of his life must have been when a petition was presented to the Common Council of New York City in 1829 that requested "James Rodgers Junr to be appointed to the Office of Regulator of Public Clocks." This petition was read and submitted to the committee on arts and sciences though it is unclear if it was ever acted upon. Rodgers was just twenty-six years old.

Rodgers would remain at either 410 or 410 ½ Broadway for the majority of his career. This new location offered him a residence as well as a separate shop behind it to work on the various aspects of the clocks and watches he was being commissioned to build. During his active career he focused on the construction and manufacture of high grade watches, tall case clocks, and complicated regulators. He purchased the property on Broadway in 1840 and erected a new building on the site where he would remain for many years. In 1841 he received his first award, not for clock-making, but for invention. The American Institute Fair presented Rodgers with its Silver Medal that year for his development of a device that was used to measure the revolutions of a steam engine. Rodgers also developed, in 1844, an invention for an early hand-sewing device, one of the precursors to the modern day sewing machine.

But the smaller clocks mentioned above are not the clocks that gave Rodgers his greatest fame. Those would be the tower clocks and ships chronometers that he built. It is said that he built at least fifty public clocks within the boundaries of present day New York City. None are known to exist today. They were either installed in buildings that no longer stand, or eventually wore out, as most things do, and were replaced by more modern timekeepers. Some of his more noted accomplishments included the clock in the first Grand Central Station (1871-1899) and the clock located in Richard Upjohn’s magnificent entrance gate (1861) at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Rodgers most famous creation, however, would be the clock for the new Trinity Church at Wall Street in the heart of New York City’s financial district. The church was the tallest building in Manhattan when it was consecrated on Ascension Day, May 1, 1846. The clock built by James Rodgers was the largest dial clock in America at the time it was completed and the second largest in the world. It is said to have weighed over 7,000 pounds and measured nine feet wide by five feet tall. The clock was built for a total cost of $4,344, a truly massive sum for the day. As part of that work the chimes that would be required for such a large, public clock had to be specially designed. Brooklyn clockmaker Emil Whaener (?-1875) was selected by Rodgers to design the chime and striking mechanism that would be an integral part of the clock. He had worked for Rodgers for many years, having arrived in New York in about 1835. Included in the work on the Trinity design was the construction of a working scale model of the clock and its striking mechanism (The location of this model is not known today. It was left to Mr. Whaener's nephew in 1875 and has not been seen since).

The Journal of Commerce (1873) described the full-sized movement of the clock in detail:

“Since James Rodgers, the builder of the clock, put its wheels in motion, it has never stopped for any lengthened time before. In 1846 the clock was put into position and connected with the chimes. Rodgers then had his office at No. 410 ½ Broadway, and still continues his business at No. 102 Fulton Street. He has built, since, the great clock at the Vanderbilt or Grand Central Depot, and several other great clocks, but the one at Trinity is his masterpiece, and with one exception (not the Strasburg figure clock) is the largest dial-working clock in the world. The dials are ten feet in diameter, each hour being cut in relief from a single block of stone. The hour-hands are four feet in length, and the minute hands about five feet four inches. The clock is forty feet above the dials, and the movements of the hands work through long tin tubes encased in oak. There are in the clock tower three large cylinders, carrying steel and brass cog-wheels, the largest wheels being two feet six inches in diameter and the smallest being seven inches. In all there are twenty-seven wheels, not counting the friction rollers. The pendulum-rod is made of wood, twenty-one feet in length, and having at the lower extremity about five feet swing. In this there is a trade secret. Wood shrinks sideways, while iron, steel, brass, and other metals shrink in all directions. Therefore wood, well seasoned and waxed, is used for tower clock pendulums. Three weights are used, hung at the ends of heavy, seasoned ropes. The largest is on the hour hand, and weighs 125 pounds. Bales of cotton are on the lower floor of the clock tower, so that if the ropes break the weights shall not fall into the body of the church. By a simple trip leverage three bells in the chime are connected with the clock, and thus ring out the quarter hours, repeating on the last two quarters. Another lever tolls the hours. The clock is wound up once a week, taking two hours each time to raise the heavy weight from the cotton-bale to the top of the works. To economize labor a patent winch is used to perform this work. The clock was placed so far above the dial because the bells are hung just behind the clock hands, and the churchmen feared that if the bells were tolled by hand they might turn over and throw the ringers in contact with the clock-gear. Under the bells is the station of the mysterious man who rings the changes on the bells. A rough wooden seat faces a frame-work from which project nine long wooden handles. They are levers fastened to thin lines, connecting with the tongues on the bells. Beside the octave is the ‘baby’ bell. Struck with any other bell the tone of the ‘baby’ raises the sound on octave.”

It was for his work on the “arrangement, manufacture, and finish” of the Trinity Church clock that Rodgers won his second medal (1846), a gold one, from the American Institute Fair. But almost immediately the clock along with other ones in New York City came under fire from both the New York Journal of Commerce and Scientific American, who were annoyed at the poor timekeeping and maintenance of the city’s public clocks. The criticism of Rodgers clock should be taken lightly as this was business as usual in New York. The city was overrun with politicians on the take, poor management at the top, and it was often private citizens that took the heat for mismanagement at the city government level. It was, of course, up to the Regulator of Public Clocks, a city employee, to ensure proper maintenance and timely adjustments - a position that Rodgers was once considered for.

In fact, Rodgers clock very quickly became ‘the’ timekeeper for the bankers and investors of Wall Street and New York. The New York Times noted in 1905 that as business closed for the day on Wall Street:

“ . . . the view of the homeward hurrying throngs glancing quickly upward at the clock, and perhaps correcting their watches by it [could be seen]. There was recognition of accuracy – the recognition of public opinion!”

Each year the public would celebrate New Years on Wall Street, preparing to hear the mighty chimes of the clock ring out across the city. In 1903 the New York Times reported on the scene:

“Nobody heard the chimes, and not more than half of the crowd saw the church, but when the two hands of the Trinity clock marked the midnight hour, there arose a cheer that shook the foundations of the tall buildings in the neighborhood, some of which were lighted up, while the upper windows were filled with spectators watching the scene below.”

By 1896 the clock was fifty years old and was beginning to show its age. In November of 1897 the clock was reported as running seven minutes slow, an unusual event. Then on December 27, 1900 the clock became stuck with its hands reading twelve noon. A very upset local came rushing into the church to report that the clock “had gone on strike.” The janitor of Trinity Church explained quite calmly to the upset fellow:

“Gets a kink in it every one in a while . . . . . . I reckon that if you had been up there since 1846 you’d feel kind of run down yourself.”

The clock continued to service the Wall Street community until May of 1905 when all of sudden, it stopped. After 59 years, the old clock had given up. For years the clock that James Rodgers built had been serviced by Henry Fick, a retired watchmaker (Rodgers himself had serviced the clock until 1874). At the time a reporter for the New York Times interviewed Mr. Fick who explained the demise of the clock this way:

“Age! That clock old!,’ he said. ‘Nonsense; nothing less. That Trinity clock might have, should have, ought to have, gone on for one or two hundred years. Age was not the trouble; the clock was ailing from exposure. Yes, that was what the matter was, and nothing more,’ and Fick peered out from under his shaggy white eyebrows and passed his hand over the unthatched dome of his head. Did the reporter doubt it? Not he. ‘The internals of the old clock were exposed to the elements,’ he continued. ‘The Autumn gale lashed in the rain through the belfry openings, the sleet of February, and the fogs of Spring, and the Winter’s snow entered the clock and rusted the mechanism, and warped the woodwork, and incrusted the hands with barnacles so that sometimes it was difficult to move them. That was all.”

He continued “Yes, they put that clock in in 1846. It was a great clock in those days, and made quite a talk. James Rodgers made it; he had a store downtown, and was the great clockmaker of the day. Yes, a great clockmaker, and he made a good clock; that one they had in Trinity. But Rodgers is gone now; gone years ago. All the great clockmakers of that day are gone, and now the clock is gone to.”

The E. Howard Company was brought in to replace the clock. It was a thoroughly modern device, self winding, and so there was no longer any use for Mr. Fick, who had for so many years maintained the Rodgers clock (left, the spirit of the old clock departs, from the New York Times, 1905)

After finishing the Trinity clock continued to receive praise for his work at inventing. He was one of the first people to manufacture telegraphic instruments and in the early 1850’s was known as a supplier of “telegraph register’s magnets.”

By 1851 he had moved his own residence uptown to 271 East Tenth Street. During these years he was very busy, but still found time to be appointed as the official "regulator" of the Brooklyn City Hall Clock, a position he held from about 1850 to 1854. He also served as the third vice-president of the Mechanics' Institute of New York City in 1856, which was located opposite Cooper Union on Fourth Avenue.

Rodgers received many prizes during the 1850's for his numerous inventions and patents. In 1856 he received a prize for his "steam engine clocks and regulators" from the American Institute and was noted for his improvement of "omnibus registers." His insatiable appetite for invention led to a prize in 1857 for the "second best steam engine register" from the American Institute and, in 1858, for his patent for the "Improvement in Boxes for Receiving Money in Carriages."

Rodgers was awarded the contract to construct a clock for the cupola of City Hall in New York City in 1859. The clock, to be furnished for the price of $2,500, was to weigh 800 pounds and to have "four glass dials." It is not clear if the present New York City Hall clock is still the one built by Rodgers. In 1860 his business had moved to 421 Broadway, not far from his earlier location. During these years he worked occasionally for the City of New York repairing some of the public clocks located throughout Manhattan.

Importantly, in 1871, Rodgers yet again received a mention by the American Institute. That year he received an "honorable mention" for a "regulator" in "Department I - Group 7 - Division 1" of the judging. It may be that this is the large regulator discussed on this website as it was completed in 1870 and ready for the judging in 1871. More research will have to be performed to determine if this was indeed the clock given the award.

Sons Anthony and William H. Rodgers worked as watchmakers with their father also during the 1860’s. James Rodgers’ business was located back at 45 Liberty Street in 1872 and later removed to 102 Fulton Street where it would remain until the time of his death. Rodgers died on July 9th, 1877 and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, not far from the clock he had installed there so many years before. Not long after his death local papers carried the following announcement:

"FOR SALE - The balance of the stock and tools of the late James Rodgers, embracing a fine watchmakers' regulator, lathes, clocks, movements, and miscellaneous articles. Inquire at the premises, No. 100 Fulton-st."

Son William H. Rodgers continued the family business at 100 Fulton Street for several years following James’s death. He had originally moved away to Pennsylvania, but later returned to join his father in his successful business. During that time he resided at his father’s former residence, 154 East 37^th Street.

Today, nearly all of the clocks (and watches) by James Rodgers are lost. Only two signed pieces are known to have survived, both in private collections. This website is a tribute to a truly great clockmaker and will hopefully aid researchers near and far in learning about his craft.