09/03/2026
I did not know this!
The Allen-Bradley clock tower on Milwaukee's south side has the largest four-faced clock in the world, and it held the overall record for decades.
Each of the four faces is 40.3 feet in diameter, which is nearly twice the size of Big Ben's. The minute hands run about 20 feet long and weigh over 500 pounds each. The hour hands are shorter and heavier. The whole assembly sits atop the Allen-Bradley building at 1201 South 2nd Street, rising about 280 feet.
It went up in 1962. Allen-Bradley, the electrical components manufacturer founded in Milwaukee in 1903, needed a landmark on its expanding headquarters. The company built the tower and the clock, and for years it was billed as the largest four-faced clock in the world. The Makkah Royal Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia surpassed it in overall size in 2010, but Allen-Bradley still holds the four-faced record.
The faces are illuminated at night and are visible for miles across the south side and from the lake. Sailors on Lake Michigan used it as a navigation reference, which is how it picked up the nickname the Polish Moon, a reference to the heavily Polish neighborhoods it presided over.
The clock ran without a second hand originally, and the mechanism has been updated over the years.
Allen-Bradley became part of Rockwell Automation, which still occupies the campus and maintains the tower.
There is no public access to the clock faces. It is a working corporate headquarters.
What makes it matter locally is that it is visible from everywhere. Bay View, Walker's Point, the Third Ward, the freeway, the lakefront. People on the south side use it to orient themselves without thinking about it.
Four faces, 40 feet each, over a factory.
