Photo: Emw, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Look up from almost anywhere at Riverwalk and you'll find it: the Ayer Mill clock tower, its green copper roof rising 267 feet over Lawrence.

It is the largest mill clock in the United States. Its four glass faces are just six inches smaller across than the faces of Big Ben in London, which makes the two of them the largest four-faced chiming clocks in the world. Lawrence likes to call them sisters.

The clock first rang at 9:00 p.m. on October 3, 1910, the night the Ayer Mill opened. For the next 45 years it kept time for thousands of mill workers.

Then, in 1955, the American Woolen Company closed, thousands of people lost their jobs, and the tower fell into disrepair.

In 1991, Lawrence brought it back. The community raised close to a million dollars to restore the tower. The work was overseen by Balzer Family Clock Works of Freeport, Maine, and the restored bell carries an engraving saying the work was done by and for the people of Greater Lawrence. To many in the city, that restoration was a symbol of hope.

The Essex County Community Foundation now manages an endowment, with support from New Balance, the Wood and Ayer families and local foundations, to keep the clock running for good. New, brighter lighting went in in late 2013. In 2021–22, Balzer took the clockworks apart again and carried them to Maine for a full restoration. While the clock was away, its faces glowed at night in programmable colored light.

On October 3, 2010, more than 150 people gathered to celebrate the tower's 100th birthday.

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