116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Czech Village museum’s Clock Tower to add Prague-style astronomical clock features, figurines
Work to begin in early April, with grand opening now set for Sept. 27
CEDAR RAPIDS — Some clocks just go “tick tock.” A few do astronomical things.
By fall, the Clock Tower standing silently in Czech Village will sing and dance, and show the phases of the sun and moon, geographical information — and the time, of course.
Initial work will begin in early April to complete the original vision of creating a Prague-style astronomical clock, known as an orloj. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. May 3 in the tower’s courtyard.
Built in 1410, the Prague structure that the Cedar Rapids tower is patterned after “is the oldest still functioning astronomical clock in the world,” said Dalibor Mikulas, vice president and orloj project manager for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids.
“And we will be the only one in the United States,” added Cecilia Rokusek, president and chief executive officer at the museum, which owns the Clock Tower at the corner of Inspiration Place and 16th Avenue SW.
The renovation includes adding 12 figurines on two carousels that awaken on the hour to mesmerize viewers watching them rotate to the music of Czech composers Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana.
While the figurines in the Prague Orloj are the 12 apostles, the 12 figurines in Czech Village will tell the immigrant story, with a farmer, a bee keeper, a coal miner, a meatpacker and other sculptures representing those who came here from Czech, Slovak and Moravian lands.
“It’s really something that would reflect the stories connected with immigration, freedom and democracy,” Mikulas said. Making those connections and telling those stories are fundamental aspects of the museum’s mission, Rokusek noted.
The $1.6 million project also bridges American and international expertise. Andrej Harsany of Bratislava, Slovakia, is sculpting the 12 figurines, and the SPEL Company in Prague, caretaker of the Prague Orloj, is building the fully digitized inner workings of the Cedar Rapids astronomical clock. Newmann Monson Inc., with offices in Iowa City and Des Moines, is the project architect and Graham Construction of Cedar Rapids is the construction manager.
The Cedar Rapids clock tower was built in 1995 next to the museum’s original riverside site. It worked intermittently through the years, but was greatly impacted by the 2008 flood and the 2020 derecho. The four clocks — one on each side — aren’t working now.
After the historic 2008 flood, the massive museum building was painstakingly moved to higher ground in 2011, but the 61-foot Clock Tower stayed put. It now stands alone, welcoming visitors to Czech Village or bidding them farewell as they pass over the Bridge of Lions into New Bohemia on the other side of the Cedar River.
The renovations are being financed “entirely through contributions,” Rokusek said. The down payment of $250,000 came from retired banker and philanthropist Ernie Buresh before he died in April 2022. He also was a driving force behind the current Clock Tower.
“But they didn’t have the resources to finish it,” Rokusek said. With Buresh’s gift paving the way to finish the work nearly three decades later, the tower will be renamed the Buresh Immigration Tower. The grand unveiling, free and open to the public, is now set for Sept. 27, with details to come.
About half a million dollars has been raised, Mikulas said, leaving $1.1 million to go. And since the scope of the project has expanded from just installing the astronomical clock mechanisms, to now adding the figurines, fundraisers are presenting that aspect to potential donors, as well. Project contributions can be sent to: NCSML Development Office, 1400 Inspiration Place SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404.
Tourism
The public can watch the tower’s transformation from silent sentinel to entertaining time piece and beacon of tourism. Signage will outline the process, as the intensely complex work — some visible, some internal — continues through the summer and up to its autumn grand opening.
The Prague structure, attached to Old Town Hall, continues to draw throngs of viewers year-round. Rokusek recalled standing in front of the tower for three hours, sipping a warm spiced wine on a cold December day, as she strolled through Old Town with a group of women from a conference she was attending.
“You never tire of it,” she said about watching the figurines, “and when the next hour came, you watched it.” Despite the frigid temperatures, “people were all around there.”
“It’s a complex mechanism, full of history,” Mikulas said. “And by saying ‘complex,’ you have so many figurines, so many aspects, so many elements that you can focus on. And since it plays just for two or three minutes, that’s why you want to see it again and again, and again.”
Rokusek envisions the Cedar Rapids counterpart as a driver for tourism, too.
“We want people to come to the Clock Tower. We want to highlight this to be a destination place for Cedar Rapids,” she said, “that people really come here and say, ‘We’re going to go visit this community. We’re going to stay there for a weekend. We’re going to go to Czech Village. We’re going to go to the museum. We’re going to go to NewBo, then we’re going to see the Clock Tower,’ so that it really becomes a destination place for families.”
She hopes the figurines also will spark visitors to dig into their own heritage and find out what jobs sustained their ancestors.
“We can bridge that story, and it’s on the bridge,” she said, noting the tower’s adjacent Bridge of Lions with statuary hearkening to Prague’s medieval Charles Bridge.
“What a great, great asset for our city and for our state,” she said.
Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com
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