Clock Tower Needs Fixing? Time for Express Glass

When clock faces on Melbourne’s iconic Dimmeys Clock Tower needed replacing, the glazing experts at Express Glass stepped in to restore a beloved landmark to its former glory.

Mention the words ‘clock tower’ to people, and they’re likely to immediately think of the one that gets struck by lightning in classic ’80s flick Back to the Future. Mention ‘clock tower’ to a Melburnian, however, and the (second) thing they’ll likely think of is Dimmeys clock tower on Swan Street in Richmond, a beloved local landmark that was built in 1910 as an extension to popular drapery store Dimmeys.

The clock tower, which was painted yellow and black in 1981 to mark the 350th AFL game of Richmond footballer Kevin Bartlett, hasn’t been struck by lightning, but it has seen some wear and tear over the years, as you’d expect for an icon whose age is north of a hundred.

The problem? A shattered clock face on the eastern side, and a second clock face on the southern side with a hairline crack, putting it at risk of shattering in the future. The solution? A meticulous clock face replacement plan to be executed by glazing experts Express Glass, the best in the biz when it comes to glazing solutions for both small projects and those that are more clock-tower sized.

For a clock-related job with a lot of moving parts (terrible pun intended), the Express Glass team had a multitude of ducks to get in a row, starting with sourcing the glass for the clock faces - a tricky task when the originals weren’t exactly perfect circles.

“The challenge was getting them cut to be the correct circumference, because the sandstone holes that housed the original clock faces were not exactly round,” says Joe Cunningham, the Express Glass Project Manager who oversaw the job. “We had to build a template of both faces to ensure that when we went to cut the glass, that it was cut correctly to size.”

The clock faces couldn’t just be cut anywhere, either: due to the size (diameter: 2230mm) and weight (146.46 kg each) of the clock faces, and the fact that they needed to have a hole drilled in the middle of the double-laminated glass by a CNC machine, the job was handled by Australian Glass Group in Hobart, Tasmania, the only place in Australia that could work to the precise specs in-house.

Think it’s then a simple case of just chucking the custom-made clock faces into place, and Bob’s your mother’s brother? Think again.

“The job itself wasn’t difficult, it just had a lot of steps to consider,” says Express Glass Managing Director Adrian Grocott. “The clock tower was in the middle of the Dimmeys building - so back from a busy road, which you had trams running along on overhead live wires. Closing the road off wasn’t an option, so we had to position a pretty large crane in a side street to lift the glass up to the tower.”

The next issue to figure out? Installing the clock faces from inside the tower, since they were too big to slide through the sandstone holes from the outside.

“The clock tower has three levels: Level 1 is a residential unit [Fun fact #1: The Dimmeys building now houses 82 apartments], Level 2 is an empty room with windows [Fun fact #2: Back in the day, Dimmeys would get a band to play in here], and Level 3 is where the clock mechanism - which makes you feel like an ant inside a wristwatch - lives in a very confined space,” explains Adrian.

“We had to remove the windows on Level 2 and crane in the clock faces. There was a small manhole and ladder in that room leading up to Level 3, so there was no way the clock faces were going through that. [Fun fact #3: On average, men and women were 10cm shorter 100 years ago compared to now, which explains why the space was so tight.] Instead, we had to cut a slot into the timber roof and winch the clock faces up to Level 3.”

If you’re thinking, “Surely you’d need permission to cut holes into a heritage-listed building?!”, you’d be bang on. Enter architect and ‘Heritage Consultant’ Gosia Gabrys, who acted as the liaison between Express Glass and state government organisation Heritage Victoria.

“I am the conservation and heritage architect for the Dimmeys site, which I regularly visit to ensure the owners of the property look after it in an appropriate manner, because that's one of the requirements that Heritage Victoria put in place when they allowed the redevelopment of the site,” says Gosia.

“A lot of my job for the clock tower was obtaining the required permits and approvals from Heritage Victoria to get the project underway, because there were multiple conditions that we had to fulfil. The glass had to be of a particular type, fragments of the original glass had to be retained, a precise methodology had to be provided - the list goes on.”

After 10 days and 45 hours of work from half a dozen Express Glass glaziers and numerous others, the finishing touch came from a signwriter employed to paint letters onto the clock faces (previously Roman numerals were used, but they were replaced by ‘DIMMEYSSTORE’ in the 1960s).

“Ultimately, it’s a big thank you for a job well done.”