Have you noticed the work being done on the clock tower at Mill & Main? Perhaps Maynard’s most recognizable landmark and prominent in the center of the town seal, the clock tower has been a beacon in Maynard since it was erected and gifted to the town in 1892 by Lorenzo Maynard to honor his father, Amory Maynard.

The clock features nine-foot-tall hands on all four sides and has a hand-wound mechanism built by E. Howard & Company, known for accurate and high-end mechanical timepieces. There are 120 steps that have to be climbed weekly to wind the clock, with 90 turns for the timer and 330 turns for the striker. Originally, the clock tower was white and gray with red brick trim.

In 1975, Elizabeth M. Schnair wrote about the clock tower in her monograph, “A Timely Talk on the Town Clock,” and noted it was difficult to trace some of its history because the town didn’t own the clock and the mill had gone through multiple owners. She wrote that “the clock tower is a complex wooden structure over a brick base on the roof of Building 8 Annex. It was built by Levi Cheney, well-known Maynard resident, who built many sturdy homes in Maynard in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The outside of the tower was painted white with a brick-red trim, and these colors were borne for fifty years, until World War II. The red was overlaid with grey to make it less conspicuous from the air.”

After Digital Equipment bought the mill in 1974, it did major maintenance and painting on the clock tower. Then, in July 1999, another renovation and repainting restored the tower to its original white and red-brick scheme. In 2018, property management and preservationists applied a protective paint to ward off the weather.

Paul Sullivan, senior property manager at Mill & Main, said current renovations were necessary due to “deterioration of wood cladding and trim in several areas throughout all elevations” and because “peeling paint was prevalent throughout all elevations.” Sullivan said Phase 1 was completed July 31 and included the top two sections, from the clock faces, or middle sections, to the very top.

When asked when the anticipated work will be completed, Sullivan said “Phase 2 will be the lower sections and is scheduled for completion in 2027.”

And the big question of what color the clock tower will be? Sullivan responded that the finished tower would be “white with maroon accents.”