Town #38 Waterbury

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Timexpo Museum * Bacco's Restaurant * Howland-Hughes Building

We don’t want to lose our momentum, so, even though today is cold and blustery, we ventured out. The day started gray but by the time we reached Waterbury the sun was out and the 1.1 degree reading at home in the early morning had improved to 28 about 11:15 when we arrived in Waterbury. Our friend John Bellino grew up in Waterbury and recommended we visit there. His dad worked for Timex for over 54 years and holds the record for the person employed the longest by the company.

The Timex museum (Timexpo) is conveniently located at the Brass Mill Commons Mall, right off I-84 in Waterbury. They have three floors of exhibits that were well presented and informative. We had no idea that Timex had gone through so many name changes and corporate iterations. The museum’s website presents all the changes clearly. We were surprised that it had officially been called the Timex Company only since 1969. The name had been used before that to identify a product line, but the company name then was U.S. Time Corp. (1944-1969). More information about the clocks that were displayed would have been helpful, but their creativity in designing timepieces to meet every time-keeping need for every person was amazing. Remember the early television ad that had a Timex watch attached to a motorboat propeller underwater? That ad is reconstructed at the museum.

We ended at an exhibit based on Thor Heyerdahl’s explorations which was very interesting but didn’t seem to have a connection to Timex. The connection was a Mr. Olsen, who had been the president of one of the Timex Company’s predecessor firms. He supported and invested in Heyerdahl’s ventures.

We had lunch at Bacco’s based on an online review that was exemplary, and we concurred. Lunch at 2 p.m. is risky, and the dining room was sparsely populated. The food was excellent but our waiter was inattentive. Bob had veal parm and I had a special—cheese tortellini with Portobello mushroom and gorgonzola cream sauce. (Timexpo $12; lunch $28)

I’d read about the Howland-Hughes Building, formerly a large, well-known, G.Fox-like department store. It has a unique shape and “the largest open architecture footprint in Waterbury's downtown” (from the website). Now its 124,000 square feet of space is largely empty, except for the street level, with local businesses in it, the most interesting of which was the Made in Connecticut Store. (Jan)