The project was approved in 1942 and the work took place over 5 years, being completed in 1947. A work for which the Minister of Public Works, Eng. Duarte Pacheco, took a personal interest, visiting the site in 1943. He never got to see it completed, as he died the same year he visited, aged 43, in a brutal road accident.
The Clock Tower was inaugurated in 1950, after many years of strong controversy, as it was considered by many to be “an aggression to the harmonious and wide reading” of the surrounding space, according to newspapers of the time.
The advocates of its construction defended the “intention of breaking the horizontality of the beach and the need to frame the development of the avenue and signalize maritime navigation…”.
The work comes in a context of modernization and expansion of the city, towards Buarcos, including the construction of the Avenida Marginal, the construction of the Esplanade and the access stairs to the beach.
The Tower is 23 meters high, received a sundial in 1949 and a mechanical clock in the 70s.
The authors of the project were the architect João António de Aguiar and the engineers Henrique Óscar Ferreira and José Nunes da Costa Redondo, who idealized an unusual construction method, dispensing with reinforced concrete and using a mixed structure of steel and stone masonry.
It never had a maritime signaling system, as originally planned, but for many years it broadcast radio broadcasts from the tourist office on the Esplanada Silva Guimarães.
The Clock Tower has been classified as a Property of Municipal Interest since 2004 by the Portuguese Institute of Architectural Heritage.
