Industrial landmarks

[ScreamingViking]

Another "catch-all" for updates/changes/whatever to things that hail from our industrial past. This doesn't really fit the waterfront thread so figured a new one may hold it best.

There's some historical trivia/speculation about the origin of the names of Catharine Street and St. Catharines at the end of the story, which I did not include here since this post is about the clock.


Iconic Sherman Clock returns to the Bayfront
When J.I. Case took over IH’s Hamilton plant in the mid-1980s, the cube was dumped in favour of a Case sign that sat on a pole-like structure with “wings” that displayed two clock faces and renderings of the company’s logo.

Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
Tue., Aug. 23, 2022

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilto...-bayfront.html
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%...-bayfront.html

1985:


Refurbished:


The lost original, pre-1980s:


Harvester City heydays:


You can’t turn back the clock, but you can upgrade it.

That’s the story at the northeast corner of Burlington Street and Sherman Avenue with an iconic piece of Hamilton industrial history returning this summer after years of neglect and a major retrofit.

The “Sherman Clock” sign has taken different forms over the years, tracing back to the early 1960s when the property was used by International Harvester. Version 1.0 was a “Home of International Harvester of Canada” landmark that featured an eye-catching rotating cube, with a clock, and was a major part of the company’s branding.

When J.I. Case took over IH’s Hamilton plant in the mid-1980s, the cube was dumped in favour of a Case sign that sat on a pole-like structure with “wings” that displayed two clock faces and renderings of the company’s logo.

That version 2.0 sign hung on until the late 1990s when Case ceased operations. Over the last two decades the sign — without the Case name on it — fell out of use and rusted in the harbour breeze.

In the aftermath of Case, the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority acquired 115 hectares of the Pier 10-15 property it calls “Westport” that includes the former International Harvester/Case site. More recently, the port authority decided it was time to fix up the old entrance way sign and make it consistent with the current ownership. The sign now says, “Welcome to the Port of Hamilton.” There is a new clock. Although, when I drove by it last Thursday (AUG. 18), it wasn’t working yet.

The folks at the port authority stopped short of a version 3.0. They decided to work with the Case “modernist esthetic” design.

“The clock obviously needed some TLC. It had not been updated since the early 2000s, as far as I can tell,” says port authority spokesperson Larissa Fenn. One update that did take place at some point was ship wheel symbols placed at the noon, 3, 6 and 9 positions on the clock. “But some people thought they were snowflakes,” says Fenn.

“We kicked around some ideas about taking the sign out altogether and replacing it with landscaping but in the end decided on restoration.”

“It was more work than we expected,” she says. “We thought we were just going to paint it and put new letters on it. But the wings were badly corroded and had to be replaced.”

In the end, the costs ballooned to $60,000 with only the centre support being salvageable.

But Fenn says there are no regrets. The sign transformation and refurbishment echoes what is going on with the larger property. The land is being redeveloped, and will eventually connect to newly expanded shoreline created through the ongoing Randle Reef contaminated sediment encapsulation project.

The sign is an effort to embrace the past and look to the future at the same time, Fenn says.

...

International Harvester operated from 1903 to 1985 on Hamilton’s bayfront, and at its peak employed 3,000 employees. In its early days, the plant was touted as being the “largest agricultural implement works in the British Empire.” The massive complex came to be known locally as “Harvester City” with its own doctor, musical band and fire department.

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