Story of Dubai Clock Tower: Living close to the historic monument

Gulf News

Emirati Nasser Akram recounts the history, his experiences while living near the landmark  Read the full story here:   See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km

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00:00In the early 60s, my family lived here in the Port Said area in Dera.

00:27As a little boy, I remember waking up early and looking out of the window to find out

00:33what was the time.

00:34Probably you are wondering why I was looking out of the window to find out what was the

00:39time.

00:40Well, simply I was looking at the biggest clock in Dubai, the Clock Tower.

00:47The Clock Tower is the oldest monument built in 1963 and the key landmark signifying the

00:55first land crossing between Dera and Bar Dubai across Al Maktoum Bridge.

01:02About the background story of Dubai's Clock Tower, Sheikh Ahmed Al Thani, late ruler of

01:07Qatar, was Sheikh Rashid's son-in-law.

01:10In the early 1960s, Sheikh Ahmed gave Sheikh Rashid a very large clock as a gift.

01:17On the instructions of Sheikh Rashid, a concept for a tower to display the magnificent timepiece

01:23was commissioned by Otto Bollard, an Austrian architect who was part of Architecture Design

01:30Construction, ADC.

01:33So he made a sketch of idea for a clock tower.

01:36Mr. Bollard gave the sketch to his engineer, Zaki Homsi, from Syria to produce a design.

01:43This is how the shape of the Clock Tower was developed.

01:47The tower was built in 10 months.

01:51The location of the Clock Tower was once set in the major junction of Dubai, and as

01:58the city expanded, the tower became a permanent structure at the gate of Al Maktoum Bridge.

02:06Despite almost 60 years, the Clock Tower monument remains a much-loved connection between old

02:13and new Dubai, listed by the Emirates Architectural Heritage Department as one of the city's

02:19most significant cultural monuments.

02:22It remains an iconic symbol, signifying access to the bridge, as well as being a distinguishable

02:30clock in the city.

02:32We moved to Port Said in the early 1960s.

02:35At that time, the construction of the tower was going on.

02:38The area was just an open space in general, I mean, there was a clock tower, and there

02:43was some small, like, I recall the very first bakery, Dubai Automatic Bakery, was just close

02:51to Clock Tower, and we as little boys, we used to just rush to bakery and grab some

02:59cakes and bread and stuff like that, almost on a daily basis, so that was our main attraction,

03:06really.

03:07That, you know, to take a, after playing football and just spending the evening, we would go

03:12rush to bakery and grab some sweets and cakes and stuff like that.

03:16They were all open space area, there were no buildings at all, in fact.

03:21Clock Tower was the highest and the most visible monument, you come from, whether you're coming

03:27from airport side, you're coming from their side, or from Al Maktoum Bridge, Clock Tower

03:33is the only monument visible.

03:35So those days, Clock Tower was the monument from which Dubai could be identified.

03:41In this sense, it was the only monument.

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