The St. George SC town clock stands at 129 North Parler Avenue and has kept time there since June 1955, when the Farmers and Merchants Bank put it up in front of its building. It has three faces, runs on electricity, and was built to play the Westminster chimes on the hour.
That is nearly everything the record says about it, which for a clock that has stood in the middle of a county seat for seventy years is a short record. The SC Picture Project page for the clock ends with an open request for anyone who knows more to write in. Nobody has, or not in print.
When was the St. George town clock built?
June 1955. The Farmers and Merchants Bank installed it as a street clock at the bank’s front door on Parler Avenue, which is also U.S. Highway 15 and the main commercial street of St. George. Bank clocks of this sort were common in small Southern towns in the 1950s. They advertised the bank, they told the farmers what time it was, and they suggested the institution behind them would still be there at the next hour. Photographer Matt Bowen, who documented the clock in 2008, notes that it closely resembles other town clocks the same bank installed in nearby towns, so St. George’s was likely one of a set rather than a one-off commission.
The clock was electric from the start. A master clock inside the bank drove the three faces outside and controlled the chimes. Three faces rather than four is the standard arrangement for a clock mounted against a wall: there was no fourth side to read.
What happened to the Farmers and Merchants Bank?
The bank building is gone. A First Citizens Bank now stands on the site, and the clock, which was originally mounted on the old building’s facade, was moved to a freestanding pedestal at the curb. The published sources do not give the year of the move or say whether the old building was demolished or replaced in stages, only that the clock outlived it.
The town has a long relationship with local banks. Lee A. Klauber, the Bohemian-born merchant whose 1890s store building two blocks up Parler now houses the county museum and chamber office, founded the Bank of St. George, later the First National Bank of St. George. The Farmers and Merchants Bank was a separate institution, and its clock is the only piece of it still on the street.
Does the clock still chime?
The clock was built to play the Westminster chimes on the hour, the same four-note sequence used by the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster and by a great many mantel clocks. Whether the chimes still sound depends on who you ask and when you are standing there, and the record does not settle it. The clock itself keeps time. If you want the official answer, the chamber office in the Klauber Building at 225 Parler is a two-minute walk and will know.
Visiting the town clock
- Address: 129 North Parler Avenue, St. George, SC 29477 (GPS 33.184314, -80.574168)
- Cost: None. It is on the sidewalk.
- Hours: All of them.
- Nearby: Klauber Building and county museum, 0.2 mi; Dorchester County Courthouse, 0.3 mi; Lourie Theater, a block south at 206 N Parler; Appleby House, 0.8 mi
- From Charleston: About 55 miles northwest by I-26 and U.S. 78, a little over an hour
St. George was chartered in January 1875 and has been the Dorchester County seat since the county was formed in 1897. The town had 1,843 people at the 2020 census. The clock has watched roughly a third of that history go by from the same corner, first from the bank wall and then from its pedestal, and it is the thing most people photograph when they stop downtown. The SC Picture Project’s page is the best single reference, and it is still asking for more.
The clock is also where the fiction on this site tends to gather. The dispatch /whatever-hour-it-strikes/ is built around it, and the county map marks the corner. For the record, the clock keeps good time. That is the official position of the town, and it is nearly always true.