Rock Around The Clock! A History of New Plymouth's Clock Tower - Part Two

Time For A Replacement

New Plymouth was promised a replacement clock tower when its Edwardian-era post office was demolished in April 1969. Although various design proposals were rejected over the years, the city’s largest public clock – an electric one on the T & G Insurance building, constructed in 1972 – struggled to keep accurate time and so the matter continued to tick away. Meanwhile, the area at the intersection of Devon and Queen Streets where the post office and its tower once stood was turned into a pleasant inner-city park.

In June 1983 the Taranaki Herald inquired as to the whereabouts of the old town clock mechanism, after yet more complaints about the lack of a reliable public timepiece. The original clock was located, still in storage and in excellent condition. Following several letters to the editor, the newspaper ran an opinion poll which recorded overwhelming support for building a new clock tower: 774 votes to two.

This prompted the Taranaki Herald and Radio Taranaki to embark on a fundraising campaign in July 1983. The main event would be an attempt by radio announcer Roger Tonkin to stay on air for a record 70 hours to raise $70,000 for a new clock tower. A team of radio and newspaper staff, helped by hundreds of volunteers, banded together to help Tonkin reach his ‘clockathon’ target between midday on Friday the 29^th of July and 10am on Monday the 1^st of August.

Clockathon

There were all sorts of activities on air during the 70 hours, including an all-night request session for donations. Tonkin wasn’t allowed to sleep and he had to announce every song played, meaning no back-to-back ballads and only the length of a tune for bathroom breaks. A large window in the Radio Taranaki studio meant members of the public could come in and wave to Roger anytime during the clockathon, so everybody dropped by – kids in their pyjamas, police officers, even hospital staff.

Roger also made broadcasts from the site of the old clock tower, and arrangements were even made for him to be able to have a bath at a nearby residence, so long as he took his microphone with him. Sustenance was provided too – donated cakes and pies flooded in, and Taranaki Bakeries Limited promised to donate $5 an hour if Roger ate a sandwich every hour made out of the company’s bread.

More than $40,000 was raised by 200 volunteers and members of the local Jaycees club in a massive telephone appeal. Using 25 phones installed specially in the council chambers and cafeteria, they called as many of the 23,000 numbers in the New Plymouth free dialling area as they could for pledges. There were corporate donations too with Radio Taranaki giving $5000 and the Taranaki Savings Bank $10,000. The campaign also featured car washes, garage sales, special film screenings, coin trails, auctions and school mufti days.

More than 8000 people contributed money towards New Plymouth’s new clock tower in the end, from as far away as Hāwera. The average amount was $9.59 but the highest individual donation was $500 from an anonymous phone pledge – money was also received from schools, groups like the New Plymouth Senior Citizens Association and businesses including construction firm Jones and Sandford, the Fitzroy Tavern and Dalgleish Jewellers. One cent from every bottle of milk sold in New Plymouth on the Monday went to the appeal.

Tonkin did indeed break the non-stop announcing record which had previously been held by former Radio Taranaki personality Bill MacArthur, who had managed 63 hours on Radio Apple in Hastings earlier in the year. Roger has since conceded that, as his 70 hours drew to a close, he endured some light hallucinations, at one point becoming paranoid that the clockathon might be a hoax and that he was actually being monitored in the studio as part of an elaborate experiment. Yet after being driven home at the end of the event and sleeping for a mere ten hours, Tonkin was back in the studio the very next day.

New Plymouth City Council was eventually presented with $70,000 to fund a replica tower. Mayor David Lean said the appeal was a remarkable example of how a community could help itself. Tonkin and his team won the premier award for Best Community Project at the Mobil Radio Awards the following year, under the heading “Jock around the clock”.

Lean & Sway

A show of extraordinary community spirit had provided the initial funding – the next step was to choose a design for the new clock tower. In December 1983 local architectural firm Boon, Goldsmith and Co. were appointed by the city council to come up with a design incorporating the original clock faces, mechanism and bells.  They proposed a tower with a unique tilted top, referencing its hard-fought demolition, to act “as a permanent reminder of the need to think twice before removing the old”.

Terry Boon, a fourth generation Taranakian who had been part of the campaign to save the old tower from demolition, and his partner Paul Goldsmith had already been involved with several other projects that got people talking, including the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Bowl of Brooklands. Their daring design was intended to look both forwards and backwards at the same time, to shock the wider fraternity into appreciating their built heritage. For a brief but glorious moment it seemed Pisa might have some competition on its hands.

But the reaction of the majority of the public and, at least initially, the council’s policy and resources committee was incredulous. Letters to the editor accused Boon called for the commission to be opened up to different architects. Talkback radio shows were jammed with callers voicing their dismay. The architects received letters of protest addressed to the firm of Lean & Sway – Mayor David Lean being a supporter of the audacious design – and there were tongue-in-cheek concerns raised about residents straining their necks to tell the time. Leo Carrington, Mayor of Stratford, even wrote a poem to the Taranaki Daily News poking fun at the idea of a tilted tower, urging the people of New Plymouth to demand that “With Stratford we do amalgamate, [for] they’ve a clock that’s true and straight”.  Artist Michael Smither was a fan, however, and there were plenty of other residents who liked the idea of New Plymouth making a statement about staying connected to the past.

Sadly, a public opinion poll run by the Taranaki Herald ruled out the bold tilted design. More than 1700 responses were received, with forms posted back from as far afield as Singapore, over 80% of them sent by clockathon appeal donors. Only 5.2% favoured the tilted tower.

The council eventually opted for a traditional 25-metre-high replica using modern materials. Designed by Boon and Goldsmith, it was built by Roebuck Construction out of precast concrete, aluminium, steel, glazed ceramic tiles, and approximately 280 square metres of acrylic and glass. The columns were made by Inglewood Concrete and the perspex dome had a little trapdoor installed so that flags could be flown up its new pole.

Consideration had been given to the idea of relocating the new clock tower but it was decided that the original Queen Street/Devon Street intersection provided both sentimental appeal and maximum visibility with its line of sight running down to the cenotaph and the ocean beyond.

Rock Around The Clock

The replica tower cost $268,442 and was officially opened at midday on Saturday the 12^th of October 1985. The theme of the day chosen by the New Plymouth Public Relations office was “Rock around the clock”, based on Bill Haley’s 1954 hit song of the same name. There was a street parade that morning for 3000 onlookers featuring the New Plymouth City brass band, seven teams of marching girls, clowns and Radio Taranaki mascot Yudi the Yeti.

The parade was followed by speeches on the steps at the base of the tower. The editor of the Taranaki Herald, George Koea, told the crowd that “this tower is an example and reminder that any community can get what it wants”, Radio Taranaki station manager Karl Rossiter called it “a tower of memories”, and Mayor David Lean described the clock tower as a future monument.

Just before midday Trevor Bremner, a champion cornet player from the New Plymouth City Band, climbed the tower staircase to play a solo of “Amazing Grace” from the top balcony. The bells were then rung for the first time in 16 years at high noon. This swiftly segued into a concert featuring rocker Tom Sharplin, who had performed a TV show called Rock Around The Clock in 1981, the set of which had recreated a 1950s milk bar. Tom was surrounded by rock and roll dancers from the Dance Theatre Trust.

Members of New Plymouth City Council and special guests – including Mrs Alice Ward who had been present at the opening of the first clock tower as a little girl nearly 80 years before – then attended a function where the main attraction was a large cake in the shape of the tower. Commemorative ribbons were handed out to the crowd, postcards featuring an architectural drawing by Alan Reed were sold and people could even put together their own miniature cardboard cut-out tower.

Welcoming Back An Old Friend

The Taranaki Herald editorial on the Monday was titled “Welcoming back an old friend” and whilst it admitted that “there are many more urgent and worthy causes for an appeal to raise money than building a home for an old town clock” it also pointed out that “while people recognise the importance of the essentials, they need something more as well” and that “things like civic pride are still alive”.

Nelson horologist Henry Rodgers had installed the clock in the new tower two days before the grand opening at a cost of $16,500. Rodgers spent close to 400 hours restoring the mechanism and bells to pristine working condition – the old pendulum system was replaced by an electric escapement, to reduce the risk of inaccurate time caused by wind currents in the tower, and the chimes were redesigned.

Just a few months later, Rodgers was asked by the city council to design a timing device to turn the clock’s chimes off between 11pm and 6am after complaints from nearby residents and guests at the White Hart Hotel that they were being kept awake at night. Such complaints had plagued the original tower since it was built, proving that some things never change.

In December 1985 the clock tower won a design award in an annual competition run by the western branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects. The citation described it as “a high tech replica of a traditional post office tower... its proportions are excellent, its bulk giving presence amongst ageing hotels and modern office blocks and its precise location turning it into a landmark at a prominent street intersection.”  The tower went on to win a civic design award in the Pilkington National Design Awards in May 1986. Terry Boon and Paul Goldsmith were praised by the judges for their “modern interpretation of a classical brick and stone edifice”, which “significantly and effectively reflects community pride”.

Suffering surprisingly little damage over the years – the odd bit of graffiti and loose window fittings aside – the clock tower is often lit up in various colours, including pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, orange for the World Vision 40 hour famine, and yellow for Road Safety Week. New Plymouth District Council facilities manager John Farquhar climbs the tower regularly to ensure the clock is clean, well-oiled and displaying the correct time on all four faces. The clock can’t be turned back and so every year when daylight saving ends it has to be stopped for several hours then put forward. 

New Plymouth has been kept in time by a clock tower for the better part of 100 years and counting. Thousands of dollars have been raised and thousands of words written by a community who have always felt strongly about their clock tower, as part of the landscape of New Plymouth and a character in its own right.

This story was originally published in New Zealand Memories magazine #163 (August/September 2023).

Sources

Taranaki Daily News and Taranaki Herald newspaper articles (collection of Puke Ariki, New Plymouth).

Interviews with Terry Boon, Paul Goldsmith, Alan Reed and Roger Tonkin conducted in 2022.