Chelsea's clock tower was built to hold 35,000 gallons of water

The four-faced clock tower that anchors downtown Chelsea was never just a clock. When Frank Glazier put it up in 1907 over his stove factory on North Main Street, it doubled as a water tower — a brick stack holding a tank that could feed the building’s sprinklers and fire hoses. He had reason to worry about fire: two of his earlier buildings had already burned, and his whole operation ran on oil-burning heaters and stoves. The tank started at 20,000 gallons and was later pushed to 35,000.

Glazier was the most important man in Chelsea, and he knew it. His Glazier Stove Works, founded in 1891 right where the rail line crossed the road between Jackson and the railroad to Detroit and Chicago, made oil heaters and cookstoves under the brand “B&B” — Brightest and Best. He built a sprawling new complex across the tracks, topped it with that tower, and hung four seven-foot clock faces on it, lit at night so the whole town could read the time in the dark. The tower also held bells that chimed every quarter hour, the heaviest of them well over a thousand pounds.

Then it came apart fast. Glazier had been mixing his company’s money with the state’s — he had become Michigan’s state treasurer — and in 1907 the business collapsed into bankruptcy. He was convicted of embezzlement the next year and went to prison. The man who built Chelsea’s skyline finished his story behind bars.

The tower outlived its disgraced builder by more than a century. Designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1997, it was reborn as a mixed-use complex of shops and offices, and its clock still keeps time over Main Street — a fire-safety device that turned into the town’s most recognizable landmark.