Timekeepers

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Photographer's notes: The Rube would like to believe that before everyone had a wristwatch, street clocks which much more common (and as someone who rushes out either with two watches on the same wrist, or none, he wishes they still were). The place he works, for example, used to let him know how late he was across nine different time zones as he approached the entrance.

This building, the mammoth former home of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, seems evidence of this. It has two clocks: this ornate one above the 28 Broadway entrance (Fig. 1), and a plainer one above the southernmost entrance (Fig 2). The main entrance, at 26 Broadway (Fig 3), is graced by an eagle and serpent wrapped around the globe, perhaps an indication of Standard Oil being an early Multinational.

Perhaps the two other entrances were for different companies that rented space on the ground floor.