There’s a street clock in downtown San Diego that few seem to know about. It rises at the southwest corner of 7th Avenue and B Street. Perhaps you’ve seen it. Many of the people I’ve questioned over the years haven’t.
The clock is slender and about 20 feet tall, and appears a bit like a sleek, elevated wristwatch–indeed, the word SEIKO appears on the clock’s face.
I did a little research and discovered this “Solar Post Clock” was a gift in 1983 from Seiko to Jacobs & Sons Jewelers, a family business that used to be located on this city corner.
According to an interesting National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors web page, this Seiko street clock is an unusual and novel device that was supposedly the first solar powered clock to be installed in San Diego…. It has a very accurate time only quartz movement and runs on a solar powered battery system that theoretically can run for 90 days without sunshine.
The clock’s hands no longer move. While our San Diego sunshine continues, it seems time eventually ran out for this unique street clock.
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The incredible, famous, one-of-a-kind 1907 Jessop’s Street Clock is coming to Balboa Park! The elegant clock, which was removed from Horton Plaza in 2019, has been given to the San Diego History Center, and it will be a centerpiece of their museum’s future redesign and renovation!
Did you know the several million dollar Jessop’s Street Clock was once San Diego’s biggest tourist attraction? Did you know that much of its movement is gold plated, and that it is decorated with precious gems mined in San Diego County? Did you know the one day the clock’s 300 moving parts stopped working was also the day its creator died?
Eight years ago I wrote this and more, and posted photographs of the incredible clock here.
Four years ago I posted a blog about its removal from Horton Plaza. See that here.
To learn more about the San Diego History Center’s planned renovation, and see renderings showing the 22 foot high Jessop Clock standing just inside the museum entrance, check out the San Diego History Center’s web page here. You’ll also view historical photographs of the clock from a century ago!
How awesome is this!
Postcard depicting San Diego’s Famous Clock, in a display case at San Diego History Center. Published circa 1946. SDHC Document Files Collection, Jessop Family. “It is the most completely jeweled and the finest made street clock in America, and the first clock of its kind ever built in a retail jewelry store…It took 15 months to build…”
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!
If you ever visit Spanish Village Art Center in Balboa Park, make sure to step into the San Diego Mineral and Gem Society building. Inside you’ll discover walls lined with displays. Arranged in glass cases are crystals, fossils, jade carvings, handmade jewelry and a whole lot more.
You might not view, however, what goes on behind the scenes.
During this weekend’s December Nights event, the public was invited into several rooms where students were transforming minerals and gems into works of art!
I confess that as a boy I had a rock tumbler. Promising stones found on the beach would be rounded and polished in the simple tumbler until they seemed like bright bits of treasure. I also had an uncle who enjoyed lapidary as a hobby–he gave me a tiny fire opal cabochon as a present one year.
Have you considered working with metals, gems and minerals? I’m sure it would be a lot of fun!
During my behind-the-scenes look yesterday, I spoke to one friendly teacher and watched students grinding and polishing minerals using specialized machines. And I took these photographs in the “cab room” where spheres and cabochons are created!
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The elegant Jessop’s Street Clock stands like a vision from the past at the center of San Diego’s popular Horton Plaza.
San Diego’s top tourist attraction in 1907 wasn’t a zoo, a park, a popular building or location. It was an amazing clock. Word traveled far and wide about the elegant, beautiful, one-of-a-kind Jessop’s Street Clock, which debuted that year in downtown San Diego. San Diego at the time was a very small town. The large clock stood on the sidewalk in front of the J. Jessop and Sons jewelry store at 952 Fifth Avenue.
The idea for this street clock sprang from the imagination of Joseph Jessop, a jeweler who immigrated to America from England. He’d seen many beautiful public clocks in Europe. especially in Switzerland. Joseph hired mechanic Claude D. Ledger to build the complex clock, which took fifteen months of meticulous, precise work to complete. The fine clock has almost never stopped working. One memorable day the clock did mysteriously stop–the same day that Claude died.
The Jessop’s Street Clock was first displayed at the 1907 Sacramento State Fair, where it was awarded a gold medal. (The large medal of real gold was stolen, and so was the first bronze replacement!) Since then the clock has occupied several different spots in San Diego. The clock stands 22 feet tall and features 20 separate dials and 300 moving parts. It has an estimated worth of several million dollars. Much of the shining movement is gold-plated. The elegant clock contains tourmaline, agate, topaz and jade, local gems extracted from the Jessop Mine on Mount Palomar.
Today the historic clock occupies a prominent position near the center of Horton Plaza, where many shoppers breeze by with hardly a glance. I suppose very few people realize the importance of this clock, and how at one time, over a century ago, it was one of San Diego’s most well-known landmarks.
Shoppers walk past the beautiful Jessop’s Street Clock, a landmark in downtown San Diego for over a hundred years.
Intricate, exquisite gold-plated movement of the historic Jessop’s Street Clock. The massive mechanism extends twelve feet down into the Horton Plaza parking garage!
J. Jessop and Sons jewelers created this amazing clock, which over a century ago was San Diego’s top attraction!
Thousands of hours have been spent over the decades maintaining, rehabilitating, moving and reconstructing the fine clock.
The Jessops Street Clock was exhibited at the 1907 Sacramento State Fair. This is a bronze replica of the gold medal awarded to the master clock. The clock is property of the Jessop family.
Base of the 1907 Jessop Clock in downtown’s Horton Plaza shopping mall. Plaque indicates Historical Landmark No. 372, The City of San Diego.
Twelve dials on one face tell time in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, St. Petersburg, Calcutta, Capetown, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Mexico City.
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