Woodworker spent nearly a year re-creating Michigan Central Station lobby clock
Andrei Marek, a woodworker from Romania, used his life savings to buy a plane ticket to America after he lost his job. He waited five years for his wife and daughter to join him.
Highly educated in all forms of design and architecture, Marek had been employed at the palace when Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed by firing squad during an anti-communist uprising in 1989.
Marek would end up in Holland, Michigan. And all these years later, at age 75, he finds himself talking about the drawings and craftsmanship involved with re-creating the famous ticket lobby clock in Michigan Central Station in Detroit. The six-year, multimillion dollar restoration of the depot was led by Ford Motor Co., Executive Chair Bill Ford and thousands of workers who turned a shell of a 1913 Beaux Arts-style structure into a masterpiece.
The clock is prominently featured for visitors walking through the train station, just as it was back in the day.
But getting it up there wasn't easy.
In January 2021, the first relic of the missing — assumed lost — historic ticket lobby clock surfaced, said Austin Giesey, project manager responsible for the interior historic finishes for the Christman/Brinker Corktown Joint Venture.
Bits and pieces used to guide re-creation
"A local collector and antique dealer arrived on-site with a van full of parts and pieces he thought were interesting. Wrapped in a moving blanket was a shard of the cast-iron clock face," Giesey told the Free Press. "Having only a grainy historic black and white photo of the clock, exacting detail was not discernible. This shard was the first item to begin filling in missing details about the original appearance of the clock. This led to finding a larger broken piece in a local antique shop. From that meeting, another contact was made. Construction management staff, with cash in hand, were able to procure other important missing pieces of ornamentation in southwest Detroit."
These pieces were given to Marek as patterns.
The original clock is thought to have been broken apart and sold as scrap, Giesey said. "But luckily, pieces had been saved and were used to re-create this monumental timepiece faithfully and accurately."
The clock is 6 feet tall, 8 feet wide and weighs approximately 1,000 pounds.
The clock mechanism, control system and replication of numerals and clock hands were made by Electric Time Co. of Medfield, Massachusetts. The ornamental clock face overlay was created by laser scanning the found piece of cast iron. Then, using 3D technology, a complete model of the overlay was created. From this, a mold was made to re-create it in a resin-based final product, Giesey said.
The white clock face is Italian statuary marble for the 68-inch diameter, half-inch thick face.
It took nearly a year to build the clock.
"Restoration is kind of a complex job. We had a copy of original drawings. In woodworking, we have to make a full-scale drawing," Marek told the Detroit Free Press. "So I redrew the clock going to full scale and then I started work on that clock. I did the drawing and carving the parts they needed. It took a few months, back and forth, to do the drawings and get approval and make the changes and wait for approval. ... It's not like you start work at 6 and finish at 5. There's research and trial and error and we reach a final conclusion and agree and then start working."
'Imagining, dreaming and thinking'
Everything is preparation, Marek said. That includes selecting the wood and its color, thickness and grain.
Woodworkers, including Marek, still use hand chisels.
"The people who carved pyramids 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, they use chisels. I use similar chisels today," he said. "I'm an old man. I did work on any wood that grows on the surface of the earth. But this wood they used to build this case for this clock was mahogany. It wasn't genuine mahogany, but it was the family of mahogany. That species of wood is one of the best for a wood carver. It's relatively soft and strong enough to keep the geometry and form. The result is already, shall I say, beautiful. It doesn't need to be that much stained or finished because the color is already there."
The clock consumed his thoughts for months, Marek said. "I am imagining, dreaming and thinking about all the work I did."
Research included looking at old, blurry photos and trying to make out detail, said John Van Dyke, 70, of Holland, retired operations manager for Zeeland Architectural Components, which is an adviser on special projects such as the train station. His company employed Marek, who recently retired and moved to North Carolina to be near his daughter.
Marek knows history so well that he understands all the architectural and period touches.
"I don't believe anybody can do what Andre can do anymore," Van Dyke said. "There are people who can execute the actual chisel work with the carving, but I don't know of anyone else who has that, coupled with architectural knowledge and the ability to draw everything in a very artistic way."
Marek worked on other fine woodworking elements throughout the train station, but the clock is his greatest work. Again and again, Marek talks about being thankful for his role in the project.
"You can hear my accent," he said. "I wasn't able to master the English language. Because I'm an immigrant, to be able to get that kind of job is a tremendous honor."
A life of perseverance
Marek, who was born in Transylvania, calls himself a hillbilly because he grew up in the mountains. His ancestors were coal miners. Marek was sponsored by a cousin in Michigan and worked with a furniture company at the time to get the immigration paperwork done.
"It's a wonderful story that he just persevered," Van Dyke said.
Then, and with the Michigan Central clock, now.
Re-creating a cast iron clock with wood took skill, Van Dyke said. "The finishing would make it look like it was that cast metal. we did it in mahogany because it's the most stable wood. Its expansion and contraction are minimal and it's pretty rot-resistant. It's easily machined and carved, yet it's a tough enough wood that it won't crush if you bump it too hard. It's not inexpensive, but it's good for something you want to last 50 years."
Hanging the clock took skill because of its weight. So there's a French cleat method of hanging that involves an internal metal frame that hangs on another metal frame that's mounted to the wall. For the clock mechanisms to work properly, everything must be stable. And it's made with marble behind the clock face.
Electric Time Co., the supplier of the clock mechanism that moves the clock arms, met to discuss the physics of weight displacement and balance, Van Dyke said.
At least a dozen people worked to create the clock by the time it was all said and done.
'Bringing history alive'
James Sprague, managing editor of Horological Times, a magazine for the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute, based in Harrison, Ohio, near Cincinnati, said clockmakers are known to roll up their sleeves and pursue restoration with passion.
"For them, it’s not just about 'let’s get this clock running again,' " Sprague told the Free Press. "In my experience, clockmakers are mathematicians, scientists, historians and, most importantly, artisans."
While many people have cellphones and smartwatches, analog timepieces provide beauty, he said. "The skill, the finesse and the techniques that are needed to create a clock are just absolutely mind-blowing and amazing. When someone makes the effort and has funds to restore something like that clock in that station, it's s bringing history alive. That clock meant something, or had an impact on all those people that went through that station."
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Editor's Note: The reporter's husband worked on the train station as an electrician. And her great-great grandfather founded T.J. Wall & Sons paint company in Corktown in the 1800s.
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Central Station's recreated lobby clock brings back history
