The watchman Inside a shop where time stands still, an 89 year old keeps NYC ticking by Yohana Desta The watchman Inside a shop where time stands still, an 89 year old keeps NYC ticking by Yohana Desta
Al, an 89-year-old watch repairman in downtown Manhattan who prefers to keep his last name to himself, is excited about the Internet. "I’m on there now. I’m on that and I’m on Yelp!” he tells Mashable. He talks emphatically, but barely ever looks up from desk, which is covered in dozens of watches and watch repair tools. He has six to fix in the next two hours. Though his hearing is somewhat damaged, his eyes work as well as ever. All he needs is a small magnifying glass, affixed to his right eye, and his tools.
Al's tools, including magnifying lens
Boxes full of spare parts in Al's shop
When he speaks, his voice is draped in a thick Brooklyn drawl, the kind that comes from being born and raised in the area's Windsor Terrace neighborhood. He still lives there, in a house he bought decades ago and settled into with his wife and three children, Diane, Mark and Al Jr. Hearing him summarize his life is a charming lesson in modesty and brevity.
"Nothing unusual about me. I got married, have children, I live in a home and stayed in the neighborhood. I had a car, which I gave up. And my wife passed away about 18, 19 years ago. And I had a couple of girlfriends. I gave them up with the car,” he chuckles. “And I like my work, I enjoy my work. I’ll continue doing it as long as I can.” Of course, there's a little bit more to his story.
As a teenager, he learned how to fix watches at the Brooklyn High School for Specialty Trades. After school, he worked at a watch shop for a few years, before co-opening a shop in lower Manhattan with a friend. That was in 1949. He still considers it the busiest working year of his life. It was after World War II, when people were finally wearing dress watches again.
"During the war, you couldn’t get a dress watch — it all went into the service," he explains. "We used to buy the old watches and refurnish them with a new dial and a new case and we used to sell them to the stores." That went well until 1959 when the country went into a recession. The shop closed and Al struck off on his own, opening up a repair shop on 87 Nassau Street, an area he's been near ever since. “I seen a lot of business go out and I saw a lot of new business come in," he says. "And more fast food places."
The building that Al works out of. Shopping is still good in the area — "You can get a lot of nice bargains," Al says — but he misses old, nowdefunct department stores like Goldsmith's. The native New Yorker has seen Manhattan change quite a bit over the last 60-plus years. “I don’t see as many people as I used to see. There's a lot less people ever since the World Trade Center was attacked. And less small businesses...there are more corporations taking over."
For the last 20 years, Al's repair shop, the Maddox Watch Company, has been based out of small, cramped room in a five-story building at the corner of Beekman Street and Theatre Alley. Inside, the walls are lined with standing closets, filing cabinets, shelves filled with busted watches and various knick knacks. Stashes of chocolate candy and cookies he likes to snack on hide in one of the closets. A photograph of Pope John Paul II is plastered near the back window, which offers a lovely, verdant view of City Hall Park. Three $1 bills, the first he ever made in this shop, are taped above his desk. But Al has to leave this shop now. About two months ago, the landlord sold the building to a developer, who will transform it into a 20-story condominium. Al shrugs in a matter-of-fact way — it's a common New York story.
"[He] got an offer he couldn't refuse," he says, Brooklyn accent lending a Godfather-like essence to the phrase. The landlord is relocating everyone in the building to another one nearby. Will it affect his work flow? Not really, Al says. He gets most of his business from nearby jewelers, stores in Kings Plaza and Macy's. On a typical day, he repairs 20 watches. Still, keeping up with new watch designs presents its challenges. Some watches have become more complicated, he explains, while others are ultra cheap. "They don’t use mechanical watches anymore," he says. "You can buy a quartz watch for hardly anything." Among his collection of watches, his favorite is a Vacheron Constantin. Often considered one of the "Big Three" Swiss watchmakers, a modestly priced Vacheron watch would cost $20,000, though it can skyrocket to hundreds of thousands of dollars. "[It] belonged to the piano player at the Waldorf Astoria," Al explains. He bought it through a friend. Many of Al's favorite stories have an old world edge to them, a vintage glamour. One of his first famous clients was William O'Dwyer, New York City's 100th mayor who served from 1946 to 1950. Al fixed his pocket watch in 1954. "He was well pleased."
He also fixed a bunch of miniature clocks for the late, Oscar-winning actor Eli Wallach, also a native Brooklynite, who starred in The Magnificent Seven; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Godfather Part III. One of Al's friends served in the army with Wallach and stayed close to him. When the actor needed to get some clocks repaired, Al's friend knew just the guy to call. Al relishes telling this story. He pauses, then opens a standing closet behind him. Inside is a large photograph of Wallach, a still from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s curled up at the corners, yellowing with age. In blue, a signature is written: “For Al, the great watch man – Best wishes, Eli Wallach.” "Isn't that nice?" Al beams. Wallach also gave him a signed copy of his book and invited him out to lunch, which Al reluctantly denied. "I couldn't leave! I had customers coming in."
In five months, Al will turn 90. He still never thinks about retiring. "As long as I’m able, I’ll continue working," he says. "I like my work. I should be pretty familiar with it after so many years.” Though watch repair is a "dying trade," he's quick to call it a good one. Besides, he's confident there "will always be business for me." People still need crystals, batteries and everyday repairs. Smartwatches intrigue him, but they're hardly on his radar. He's never seen one in person. "They do everything now," he muses. "The technology is amazing. Amazing." But before you finish asking whether he'd ever wear one, he interjects. “No, no. I’m still a little old-fashioned.”