When Moose Jaw’s population grew from 1,500 in 1901 to almost 12,000 in 1911, its red brick post office built in 1905 on the southwest corner of Main and Fairford Streets was already too small for the bulging city.
In the boom period just prior to the First World War, the federal government announced it was planning to build a larger post office on the same site.
The 1905 post office was to remain standing as long as possible while builders worked around it so interruption of postal service would be kept to a minimum.
Moose Javians liked everything about the new Beaux Arts style building faced with Tyndall stone.
It was designed by David Ewart, the chief architect for Canada, and built by Snyder Brothers of Portage la Prairie.
The only thing they didn’t like was the clock tower.
“It has been the opinion of many in the city that the tower is not high enough,” reported the Moose Jaw Evening Times.
“Owing to the height of the surrounding buildings the clock would not be visible except in the downtown district along Main Street. While the dials of the clock are six or seven feet in diameter, they are hidden by the Hammond building to the north, the Walter Scott building to the southeast and by the Robinson MacBean department store to the residents of South Hill.”
The board of trade threw its weight behind those complaining about the tower by telegraphing the federal minister of public works: “Clock tower on local post office too low to be visible owing to the height of surrounding buildings. Can you stop operations with view to having this remedied.”
Public opinion thought the clock should be raised at least 20 feet, maybe even 30 feet, and that the minister should send an architect to Moose Jaw on the double to look into local concerns.
The minister of public works simply turned a deaf ear to the carping from Moose Jaw since work on the tower was at an advanced stage with the dials and roof woodwork already in place.
Eventually concerns for the tower faded, and when the post office, now today’s city hall, was finally completed, residents were quick to point out that the tower housed the “largest clock of its kind in the Canadian West.”
Manufactured in England by the famous clockworks of Smith and Sons, makers of clocks in many church towers and public buildings throughout Britain and overseas, Moose Jaw’s “Big Ben” was constructed on a weight system with gears and pulleys like a giant grandfather clock. It could run for eight days without rewinding.
Each of the four dials, operated by a single mechanism, was two feet larger than the dials of the clock in the new post office in Regina, a fact which, according to the Evening Times, was “the cause of much gratification to the citizens of Moose Jaw in general.”
The clock was installed in the controversial tower by Wilson and Maybee, Moose Jaw watchmakers and jewellers, and set in operation for the first time at 10 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1914.
In 1965, the city obtained the post office to serve as the city hall.
In 1985, a new police station, also clad in Tyndall stone, was added to the building’s west side.
