Tacoma Clock Challenge:
A $5000 Award for Design and Innovative Excellence
A point in time
Sponsored by SURGE Institute

Registration Info Coming Soon

Old City Hall in 2018

 Old City Hall      
       Tacoma’s Old City Hall is the most recognized historical property in the city. This 125 year-old Italianate-style structure will be developed into a mixed-use facility with restaurants, bars, an event area in the clock tower, residential, office and retail space with a scheduled opening in 2021.  It is destined to become a new hub for entertainment, business and urban living.  
       Built in 1893, this Historic Landmark served as the City Hall until 1959. It underwent new owners in both the public and private sector. OCH (Old City Hall) has been vacant since 2008 due to issues ranging from financial hardship to flooding. Surge Tacoma won a competitive bidding process with the city to bring the iconic building into the future with the latest innovations in design, while maximizing the historic preservation of the existing space. ​

Aerial view of the Port of Tacoma, 2018

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​Commerce and the Port of Tacoma
        Historically, Tacoma’s growth developed due to its position as a seaport town. As the 19th deepest port in the world, Tacoma saw its first lumber ship in 1853. It established a pivotal relationship in 1873, when Tacoma was selected over Seattle as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Today, the Port of Tacoma supplies almost 45,000 jobs in the county. The shipping industry is one of the major sources of commerce in the region and was critical to the historical growth of the City of Tacoma. ​

Time Matters 
      With Tacoma’s rich maritime legacy, the importance of time and place was crucial. Having the ability to calculate where the ship is located and accurate time in voyage was critical to explorers over time. Navigators needed to know the starting time of a port and the time of the ship at sea to correctly calculate longitude, distance, and geographic separation. 
      City founders recognized that a town clock was important to assist seafarers with accurate positioning of their ships as well as its citizens that did not own wristwatches or clocks in the late 1800’s. OCH was built with a tower but no clock due to economic hardships. Once built, the city hall clock acted to help people know when to start and stop their workday, acted as a centralized meeting place, and the four faces could be seen unobstructed, far across the land and sea. Sadly, the clock has spent more time not working than years it has. Most citizens today do not remember a period when the clock kept functional time.
 
The Wallace Family
        The Wallace Family, one of Tacoma’s most esteemed families in the 1900s gifted the city with a 2.5 ton table clock, bell, and chimes.  The four bells were fabricated by the E. Henry Company of Boston, maker of the Liberty Bell. They made the gift in memory of their 12 y.o. daughter Mildred, who died suddenly in 1904. Wallace requested that the 1904 Tacoma mayor maintain the clock in good working order. The same bells and clock face arms sit today in OCH. To learn more about the rich history of the Wallace Family (Mr. Wallace was the ambassador to France and Mrs. Wallace was daughter of a Supreme Court Justice), visit the NW room of the Tacoma Public Library.
 
The Moreno Family
        The Morenos’ are enthusiastic supporters of many regional, national and international projects. Most recently, they were the primary sponsors for the Monarch Butterfly Challenge to develop a tag and tracking system for Monarch Butterflies as they travel from Canada to Mexico. They recognize that posing challenges to the best and brightest minds in the college setting often yields the most innovative and creative outcomes.
       They also recognize the importance of restoring and repurposing historic buildings. They have a long history of purchasing buildings that have lost functionality and original grandeur. They invest and restore these buildings, often using the original materials, for an updated use with the beauty and splendor imagined by its original builders.


 
The Clock Challenge: 
         A $5000 Award for Design and Innovative Excellence
 The Moreno Family is excited to announce the Tacoma Clock Challenge. Restoration and functionality of the Old  City Hall clock is paramount to the founders of SURGE TACOMA. Long-term supporters of higher education and community engagement, the founders are sponsoring the “Tacoma Clock Challenge”. This project is available to all collegiate architectural and engineering students across the land. The competition will challenge students, leaders, and teams to propose innovative concepts in materials, design, fabrication and architectural heritage to:

• Cost effectively repair the historic clock face and four bells to uphold the legacy of its original parts.   

 

• Propose an innovative approach to keep time on the four faces of the clock and ring the bells. Bells will be rung on the hour during normal business hours. 

 

• Illuminate the four faces of the clock tower to allow citizens to enjoy its beauty without changing the original design and structure. Teams should note that the clock has been illuminated in the past and the expectation is that new, creative ideas will be given. The clock face is not translucent and the solid brick of the original tower cannot be removed. 

 

• Illuminate the tower as the original founders intended as a beacon of our light to our city. Proposals should be made to create a lantern-like effect in the top floor of the tower that will celebrate the history of our original architects.  

 

• Incorporate educational exhibits and training tools for educational and public tours into the tower and clock mechanics.

 

• Engage the community throughout restoration project of this iconic landmark. 

 
Student projects will be awarded points for these guidelines. 3 teams will be named finalists, 10 weeks after registration opens. Feedback will be given and the winning proposal will be named after four months.
A $5,000 award will go to the winning proposal followed by an additional option for an additional fund to develop plans with the architectural team that ultimately designs and completes their concept.*

The contest will be open for registration after engineers complete their renderings and seismic considerations. Teams will be registered under one individual’s email -Lead- and the winning team will have the check assigned to that individual for disbursement. Teams shall have a minimum of four people and maximum of ten, all of whom must have an active, registered collegiate email address as this is intended for as a collegiate Challenge.

Teams will need to account for the seismic restrictions in their plan for that are included in the restoration of the structure which are included in the file. 

Illumination of the clock and clocktower is paramount to this project. Historical pictures should be reviewed but innovative ideas will be rewarded. The outside of the building should be well lit as should the clock face. A separate light should be seen from the upper arcade of the bell floor.

The two floors that currently house the clock tower mechanism will be used as an event space and for public tours that display the history of Tacoma, its Port, and the legacy of Old City Hall for 125 years. Proposals should include plans for creative ideas to display this on the walls and spaces for users. 
 
The original clock apparatus mechanism may be moved to the first floor as a historical piece of equipment that will act to begin the tour of the clocktower. An additional reason to consider the move is how the current arrangement of the mechanism defines the limited space in the tower. Proposals can be given to utilize this piece of equipment or remove it and propose newer forms of timekeeping. The four bells are rung electronically and the chimes have been removed. There are multiple pieces of this table clock that are missing that can either be acquired from other similar table clocks of the period or fabricated.
 
*If winning team’s proposal is not viable, then additional plans will not be funded. This may need to be determined at the time of final clock tower planning.

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OCH in 1900 before the Clock was added.

The original clock functioning as intended for all of Tacoma & its visitors. Taken from Cysewski Collection

Images Courtesy of GritCit Magazine

Clock tower in 2018 with non-functional time components. Courtesy of GritCit Magazine

The original 1904 E. Howard & Co clock apparatus as it sits in OCH clocktower today.

Bells as they hang in 2018

Clock face gets a cleaning and illustrates that electric lights have been used to illuminate the clock and tower in the past.

The owners of Old City Hall are excited to bring the Old City Hall Clock and Tower back to its original splendor with the newest innovations in timekeeping. We are excited to spotlight the ingenuity of student minds by sponsoring the "Tacoma Clock Challenge."

We will continue to post updates to the" Tacoma Clock Challenge" on our website and release more engineering documents and registration in February.