Jersey City Waterfront & Downtown
Colgate Clock: A Factory Disappears and Its Advertisement Becomes a Landmark
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
The giant clock is an advertisement for a factory that is mostly gone.
That makes it a perfect Jersey City landmark.
Colgate's connection to this waterfront began in the nineteenth century.
Soap, toothpaste and other products were manufactured in a large industrial complex around Exchange Place.
The factory became one of the city's major employers and a familiar part of the lower Hudson waterfront.
In 1924, the company installed the enormous octagonal clock that survives today.
It was visible from Manhattan and from ships moving through the harbor.
Branding became skyline.
Later, the economic value of the site changed.
Colgate closed its Jersey City operations.
Most factory buildings were demolished as the waterfront shifted toward offices and residential towers.
The clock was preserved and moved slightly from its original position.
The industrial system disappeared.
Its logo-sized timepiece remained.
This is more than nostalgia.
The clock tells you how redevelopment chooses memory.
Keeping one photogenic object is easier than preserving an entire factory complex.
It gives a neighborhood a historical reference without maintaining the industrial land use that created the object.
That can be valuable.
It can also make the past feel cleaner than it was.
Factories meant jobs, pollution, noise, smells, labor conflict and production.
A clock alone cannot explain those things.
For locals, the Colgate Clock can feel almost like natural scenery.
It is not.
It is surviving corporate infrastructure from a city whose waterfront once manufactured goods instead of selling views.
The skyline around it is the economic reversal made visible.