In almost every Anytown, USA, passersby will notice a prominent time-honored tradition on almost every Main Street in America, a bank clock. Exactly how the connection between banks and clocks came to be still sparks speculation.
For some, clocks symbolize the reliability and consistency associated with strong banks. Others cite standardized timekeeping as a practical community service. Connoisseurs of classic architecture might argue that clocks on banks are just embellishments intended to convey permanence. For many, the clocks simply offered a familiar place to meet and greet.
No matter the origin or purpose, bank clocks for most people still conjure a nostalgic sense of comfort and community, a feeling that amid the uncertainty of today’s world, time is one constant that helps keep life on track.
The relationship between banks and clocks appears to have emerged in the late 1800s. Several socioeconomic influences drove the trends. Under the control of late 19th-century captains of industry such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and Commodore Charles Morgan, railways expanded exponentially, connecting communities and commodities and making trade and travel faster and more predictable. Accurate time came to represent modern commerce and financial discipline, and banks quickly jumped on board to align their organizations with those values.
Long before smartwatches or smartphones, keeping up with time wasn’t always easy. Many people didn’t own watches, and those fortunate few who did relied on local bank clocks to set their own pocket or wrist watches. Banks soon recognized that accurate public clocks were both a community service and a powerful branding opportunity.
Bank buildings were often monumental in the turn-of-the-20th-century era of opulence, conveying strength, stability, and longevity for people seeking a safe place for their hard-earned dollars. Clock towers, corner clocks, and projecting street clocks evolved as architectural features reinforcing those qualities.
Decades before GPS and Google made meeting someone simple, downtown bank clocks helped people stay on time and keep appointments. The clocks’ prominent locations made for easy gathering spots where friends and business associates could “meet beneath the clock” before walking to lunch, heading to a meeting, or continuing the day’s business.
O.B. McClintock/McClintock-Loomis Company in Minnesota was perhaps the most well-known manufacturer of bank clocks at the time, including the iconic Whitney Bank clock. McClintock’s clocks were generally large street clocks and bracket clocks with two- and four-dial configurations in ornamental cast-bronze or cast-iron cases featuring the bank’s name.
Boston based E. Howard & Co. produced town and tower clocks for banks, municipal buildings, and railroad stations. In the early 20th century, Seth Thomas became a widely used clockmaker among financial institutions. The Self-Winding Clock Company debuted early electric clock systems allowing banks to synchronize multiple clocks throughout a building.
Founded in 1883 in downtown New Orleans, Whitney National Bank soon became one of the most recognized banks in the South. Made of bronze with copper hoods and cut-glass dials, the first Whitney clocks were installed around 1926 at the head office on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and at eight branches operating at the time. Those early bracket-mounted street clocks featured chimes—exact reproductions of the Westminster Abbey chimes—as well as later models without chimes.
When O.B. McClintock closed in the 1950s, Whitney could not find local craftspeople who knew how to keep the chimes operating; and by 1970, all the brass tubes were removed. Whitney hired local antique dealers to search the Midwest for the remaining McClintock timepieces.
One clock found hanging in front of the Indian Springs Savings and Loan Association in Jandenhutton, Ohio, became a fixture at an Algiers, Louisiana, branch. Another clock from a small town in Illinois graced the Harrison Avenue branch. Eventually, Whitney began reproducing and assembling old clocks with help from local companies.
In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, Whitney reinstalled chimes in its St. Charles Avenue clock. The carillons once again echoed across the city’s revitalized Central Business District. During the holidays, the clock played traditional seasonal music; and during New Orleans Saints football season, fans rallied to an hourly rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Around the same time Whitney Bank began using its clock as its bank insignia, Hancock Bank, founded in 1899, installed a McClintock clock on what was then bank headquarters at the historic Gulfport Building. The bank briefly used the iron and copper frame clock as a company symbol, eventually transitioning to the Ship Island Lighthouse logo the bank used for more than eight decades.
Hurricane Camille heavily damaged the downtown Gulfport Hancock Bank clock in 1969. Repairs and restoration of the clock took 199 days from the storm’s landfall. On June 21, 1970, Hancock rededicated the clock as “a symbol of Coast courage, determination, and progress” according to a June 21, 1970, newspaper article. The clock now stands at the east entrance to Hancock Whitney Plaza.
Although not a bank-owned clock, the Seth Thomas-style ornate four-faced street clock in front of the downtown Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, Hancock Whitney financial center, was installed by that city in 2019 and has become a beloved community landmark adjacent to the bank.
Following the Hancock and Whitney merger in 2011 and rebranding in 2018, visual elements of the new brand incorporated both the Whitney clock and the Hancock lighthouse as a tribute to both legacy brands.
In summer 2020, the bank installed the old Algiers financial center clock on the Hancock Whitney Center regional headquarters building in the New Orleans Central Business District, a symbol of the company’s local legacy and timeless values.
Today, many Hancock Whitney branches display clocks maintained by the bank’s Corporate Real Estate team.
As the world looked toward a new century, banks adopted clocks because the timepieces embodied the qualities clients expected from their financial institutions: accuracy, order, and trustworthiness, traits reflected in Hancock Whitney's founding core values of Honor & Integrity, Strength & Stability, Commitment to Service, Teamwork, and Personal Responsibility.
Whitney National Bank turned McClintock clocks into an iconic corporate symbol. Hancock shifted from a clock to a lighthouse as a beacon guiding clients and communities toward opportunity and prosperity.
When the two banks came together, the legacy logos melded to beget Hancock Whitney brand imagery recognized across the greater Gulf South.