[DR1] Tick-tock

[NewsWhore]

Santiago's 120-year old town clock in is now up and running again. The clock is located in the tower of the newly inaugurated cultural center that used to be the St. Louis Fort (Fortaleza San Luis) in the heart of downtown Santiago de los Caballeros. During the nineteenth century, the clock was considered a marvel of its time and grew in importance through the years. People of the era measured the time by the sun and the clock provided merchants, workers and rural people the opportunity to know the exact time. Local historians also report how the clock served as a landmark for new visitors from the countryside, unaccustomed to the confusion of a large city, and who had become lost in the tiny streets. Today the clock, as well as the fort, is part of the city's cultural heritage, and along with the Monument, the Cathedral and the Church of the Altagracia, can be considered to be one of Santiago's most representative symbols. The Canadian museum specialist Pierre Denis recounted how in the late 1800s the town clocks represented a departure from the religious control of time to the civil control, and how different municipalities obtained large clocks to control the work periods for the town bureaucracy. The appearance of the railroads also placed pressure on the widespread knowledge of the precise time. In 1880 there was still not a public clock in Santiago, and time was kept by the ringing of a bell in the fort, by a soldier or a prisoner in the jail. Local papers of the time reported that the gongs were so rapid it was difficult to distinguish the hours. In 1882, then Minister for the Interior Ulises Heureaux gave the city the clockworks which had been purchased in France. The municipal government argued a bit as to just where to install the clock, until Heureaux, the government representative for the Cibao came and told them where to put it. It was finally installed in May 1886.

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