Schenectady clock shop set to close after 49 years

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SCHENECTADY – The Clock Works, a clock shop and repair store, has been a staple on State Street  for the past 49 years. After the death of owner Paul Major in February, The Clock Works is in the early stages of a liquidation sale.

Major opened his business in 1974, up until that point he had been a building contractor, said long-time horologist at The Clock Works, James Dunbrook.

“If you were to have studied him at all, all mechanical information transcends a given subject,” Dunbrook said. “If you have a mind wired in a certain way, you, with a little bit of prompting and studying and asking all the hard questions, can expand in so many different directions. For him, this was a natural fit, I don’t know for the life of me why he picked clocks, but whatever the reason, it really resonated with him.”

Major died Feb. 1 at 88 years old. His shop walls are still lined with ticking clocks of every size and design.

Major designed clock cases, he made clocks and built them in the store, designed and worked with different clock dials and more.

“He designed and printed out all of these different dials, and then he had a laminating machine and he would laminate them, and cut them out and fit them and everything,” Dunbrook said. “A lot of these designs were all part of his expertise in ways that I could never touch. We all have our little corner that we’re really good and we focus on, but Paul was kind of like the full spectrum guy.”

Major was one of the top three floor-clock sellers in the Northeast when floor clocks were popular, Dunbrook said.

Dunbrook began working as an apprentice at The Clock Works 20 years ago this month, he said.

“Paul had put out through the grapevine that he was looking for someone to work with him, and eventually take over the business,” Dunbrook said. “I was in my mid-40s at that point. So I came in, and introduced myself and I said I’d like to be able to apprentice for you. I would come in on Mondays, my day off and I would be given an assignment.”

Dunbrook was not sure if he would be successful when he started, he said. To be the most successful in doing anything, you have to be willing to ask all the questions until it makes sense to you, he said.

“I would come in, and I would parade up and down the stairs, why he put up with me is beyond me,” Dunbrook said. “I was one of those nudges that never went away. After about six or eight months, he said there’s nobody waiting outside with pitchforks and torches, so I guess you’ll do. So from those humble beginnings I would work here one day a week and he’d give me jobs.”

Dunbrook became full-time at The Clock Works in 2007. Major’s slogan for the store was ‘We service what we sell.” Most of the people who come to the shop have a family connection to a clock, Dunbrook said.

“Now, I am helping the family liquidate this place,” he said. “ I’m helping them mindfully find homes for all the stuff that at some point in the journey people loved. Now, it’s up to me to try to find those connections, whatever I can.”

Major collected a lot over the years, Dunbrook said. The shop will be closed by July at the latest, Dunbrook said

Major was an incredibly hard worker, Dunbrook said.

“He was in his 60s, and he was working six days a week when I first met him. I wouldn’t dream of that in a million years, and it’s not because I’m lazy. He was working six days a week, and every evening just about, he would go to a service call. I don’t know where he got it from, he was like the Energizer Bunny or something.”

Repairing and building a clock is like the ultimate game or sudoku or crosswords, Dunbrook said.

“It takes a lot of tenacity to not simply say, ‘Oh I screwed up, therefore I give up,’ As a result of that, I have managed to come up with all manner of things to do.”

Working here and repairing clocks became a springboard for Dunbrook, he said.

“Every experience that you have in your journey makes you a much more interesting, compelling and in so many ways wiser individual,” Dunbrook said. “It doesn’t have to be mechanical, but it gives you perspective. Anytime you have a single way of looking at things, how much are you missing? Whereas, when you broaden your horizons, how much more do you see?”

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