Clock Room

For eighty years, the Santa Barbara Courthouse Tower Clock ticked away. It needed to be wound and adjusted regularly, until some of the additional parts from this historic Seth Thomas Clock were discovered in their original boxes, tucked away in the dusty storage room. With this discovery, clock enthusiasts and historians, Dr. David Bisno and Dick Schall, embarked on the challenge to rebuild the clock to its original glory. They determined that the incredible result was deserving of a special viewing gallery and to tell the Story of Time through wall murals in the Clock Tower room. The old clock used to have a large apparatus that played various recorded carillon songs for weddings, holidays and patriotic celebrations. The sound from today's bells is much more authentic, although the massive bells you see in the Clock room are actually made from Styrofoam. Today, custom electronics regulate the environment for the clock and monitor its precision to a fraction of a second. The ceiling display reenacts the exact stars in the sky on the night which Juan Cabrillo sailed into our harbor, naming our town Santa Barbara.