Baltimore Tower Clocks, 1977 - Joe Schuller and Donald Kobi

Collection Location: The Library Research Center at the National Watch and Clock Museum.

Contributor: Contributed to the MDCH Program by Joanne Schuller-Stover, daughter of the late Joe Schuller, and Donald L. Kobi.

Inclusive Dates: 1971-1980.

Collection Overview: These 35mm color slides were taken by two men, Donald Kobi and the late Joe Schuller, members of the Maryland Chapter 11 of the National Mosaic inside Corpus Christi Church in Baltimore. Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC). Inspired by the United States bicentennial celebration in 1976, they scoured the city and its surroundings, looking for tower clocks. They succeeded in photographing and identifying 30 tower clocks and then producing a slide show.

In many cases Mr. Schuller and Mr. Kobi were able to view and photograph the tower clocks only from the street, but in some instances they were given guided tours and were able to climb the rickety stairs to view the mechanical works and bells. When they gained access, they used the opportunity to document not only the clocks and their works but also other architectural features of the buildings that housed the clocks, such as these mosaics inside Corpus Christi Church.

A few of the slides document buildings that have disappeared from the Baltimore landscape, such as the Maryland Casualty Company Building, a.k.a., the Hearst Building or Tower Building. This building was the first home of the Maryland Casualty Company and was later purchased by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to house his Baltimore newspapers, the Baltimore News and Baltimore American. The building changed hands a few more times before being torn down by the Manekin Corporation and turned into a parking lot.

It was the discovery of Mr. Schuller's and Mr. Kobi's photographs of Hearst Tower that led to the inclusion of the slides of the Baltimore Tower Clocks in the MDCH Program. An MDCH staff member was trying to identify the tower in this photograph of City Hall Plaza in Baltimore. A search of the Web led to the website for the Maryland Chapter 11 NAWCC and their Tower Clock Project (TCP). The TCP contains a highlight of slides of tower clocks of Baltimore, including a photograph of Hearst Tower, and builds on the work of Mr. Schuller and Mr. Kobi's original slide presentation.

In July of 2005, the slides for Baltimore Tower Clocks, 1977, were donated to the Library and Research Center at the National Watch and Clock Museum (NWCM) in Columbia, Pennsylvania. With the permission of the original donors, the Library and Research Center agreed to loan the slides to the MDCH Program for digitization. The slides were accompanied by some descriptive information compiled by Mike Eder and George Hudson, two other members of the Maryland Chapter 11 NAWCC.

This digital collection contains 143 slides photographed by Joe Schuller and Donald Kobi. The first 140 slides are presented in the original order that they are arranged in the slide carrousel housed at the Library and Research Center at the NWCM. The three additional slides were selected from a slide box containing 11 miscellaneous slides that were included with the slide carrousel when they were donated to the Library.

Special thanks to Joe Schuller and Donald L. Kobi, as well as the members of the Maryland Chapter 11 of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, in particular Frank Goad, Mike Eder, George Hudson, and Fred Crow. Special thanks also go to Joanne Schuller-Stover, daughter of the late Joe Schuller, for allowing us to digitize her father's slides, and the Library and Research Center at the National Watch and Clock Museum.

Related Material:

Arwade, Sanjay R. and Schafer, Benjamin W. "An Engineer's Guide to Baltimore." http://www.ce.jhu.edu/baltimorestructures/

Baltimore address telephone directory. Baltimore: Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Baltimore City, various dates during the 1970s.

Baltimore County criss-cross directory / Stewart Directories, Inc. Baltimore: Stewart Directories, various dates during the 1970s.

Eder, Mike. "Tower Clocks of Baltimore, 1977. Based on a slide presentation by Joe Schuller [and] Don Kobi, as updated and compiled by Mike Eder." Baltimore: Privately printed, January 2003.

Library of Congress American Memory. "Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record." http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/

National Park Service. "Baltimore: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary." http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/baltimore/

Maryland Historical Society. "Baltimore Architecture." http://www.mdhs.org/library/baltarch/archhome.html

Rasmussen, Frederick N. "Time has not dimmed the glory of the state's tower and street clocks." Baltimore Sun, Saturday, April 22, 2006, 2B.

Collection overview and related material prepared by Bill Cady, Digitization Assistant at the Central Library, Enoch Pratt Free Library / State Library Resource Center.