Daily News from New York, New York • 200

VEKY WEDNESDAY" at approximately is 11:40 lul, two middle-aged men enter 346 Broadway, a 12-story office building gence and fiscal crisis, covered over or dismantled much of the great marble and ironwork interiors, and completely ignored the clock tower. By the late "70s, the once-proud building was deteriorating. After one too many moments waiting for the light to change, Marvin Schneider snapped. "It became so annoying that I said to my friend Eric, 'Let's go look at this he recalls. So one lunch hour, Schneider and Brinw who had no training in clockmakmg but shared a fascination with car repair and tinkeringwent up to the tower.

They found it a shambles but were impressed with the clockworks they discovered. The delicate works of brass and iron, crafted by the great American clockmaker firm of E. Howard, were intact. Schneider learned that this was a "No. 4 striking clock," and its timepiece was powered by cables that lifted 2,000 pounds of continued on next page between Lafayette and Leonard Streets.

The two step into an elevator and ascend to the top floor. There they climb some narrow, twisting, cast-iron stairs, to arrive finally inside the building's north tower. In the tower's shadowed coolness, they prepare. Marvin, short and mustachioed, wears a filthy white doctor's coat, a cap covered with camouflage markings, and a pair of scruffy work gloves. His companion, George, a head taller than Marvin, also dons a cap and a work coat.

And they go to work on their regular patient. Marvin Schneider is chief surgeon and George Whaley is second-in-command. A third colleague, Eric Reiner, now primarily plays a fffl-in role, though he is available for consultations. All three are employed by the City of New "York's Department of Human Resources. But during their lunch and other spare hours, these New ISbrkers turn into Clock Doctors volunteers who maintain and repair the neglected, historic mechanical clocks of New "ibrk City.

Marvin and George spend an hour every week winding the remarkable 91-year-old, fully mechanical clock at .346 Broadway. AH three men do their work for no pay because they love it, and neither rain nor snow nor bureaucratic obstruction has been able to stop them. George Whaley (opposite) and Marvin Schneider (in hat, right and below) keep the clocks ticking on Broadway. The story of the Clock Doctors began in the late 1970s, when Schneider was crossing Duane Street on his way back to his office at 305 Broadway. "I always seemed to get stopped at the light, and my eyes would be drawn to the clock at 346 Broadway.

I noticed that the building was filthy and the clock didn't The tower has four 12-foot-high clock faces. It is the peak of what was once the magnificent New York Life Insurance Company building, designed in the 1890s by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. The insurance company relocated to Madison Square sometime after 1928; the City of New "York moved administrative offices into 346 Broadway in 1967. But the city, through a combination of negli DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE JUNE 14. 1987 25.