Vancouver — Gastown & Chinatown
Gastown Steam Clock
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Transcript
The Steam Clock is probably Gastown's most photographed object, and it is also a useful trap.
It looks Victorian. It was installed in 1977.
The clock was designed by Raymond Saunders during the neighbourhood's heritage-revival era. It uses steam in its operation and whistles, but it is not a surviving nineteenth-century street fixture.
Legend correction: it is often called the world's first or oldest steam clock. Treat that claim cautiously. The clock is best understood as a modern piece of heritage theatre.
That does not make it unimportant. The 1970s preservation movement helped save Gastown from demolition and gave Vancouver a historic district.
The clock tells us what the 1970s wanted the nineteenth century to look like—and tourists have happily photographed that invention ever since.