Gisborne Clock Tower: Gisborne’s Most Recognisable Landmark

If you’ve spent more than five minutes in central Gisborne, you’ve probably seen it.

It appears in postcards, photographs, social media feeds, tourism brochures and countless directions from locals.

“Meet you by the clock tower.”

Simple. Everyone knows where that is.

Standing proudly in the middle of Gladstone Road, the Gisborne Clock Tower has become one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks. But what many visitors don’t realise is that the clock itself is older than the tower that carries it.

The story begins with Gisborne’s old Post Office.

Before the Clock Tower There Was the Post Office

Colourised image of the grand Gisborne Post Office, built 1902 with the familiar clocks that still watch over Gisborne.

In 1902, Gisborne’s impressive new Post Office was completed on the corner of Customhouse Street and Childers Road. It quickly became one of the town’s most important buildings, complete with a prominent clock tower that watched over a growing Gisborne.

For decades the clock helped locals keep track of the time. Farmers heading into town, shopkeepers opening their doors and passengers arriving by coach all looked to the Post Office clock.

Back then, not everyone carried a watch. Nobody carried a phone. The town clock mattered.

Historic photographs show the Post Office tower dominating the skyline, long before palm trees lined Gladstone Road and long before traffic lights and roundabouts became part of everyday life.

The Earthquake That Changed Everything

Then came 3 February 1931.

The Hawke’s Bay earthquake devastated Napier and Hastings and was felt strongly throughout Gisborne. Although the Gisborne Post Office briefly survived, its clock tower was judged unsafe. Like many towers around New Zealand, it became a casualty of a new understanding of earthquake risk.

The tower was eventually removed and soon after the Post Office was deemed to be unsafe and demolished.

For a time, Gisborne lost one of its most familiar features.

But the clock itself survived.

The Clock Gets a New Home

One of the most fascinating pieces of Gisborne history was preserved in a 1955 Gisborne Photo News article.

The article explained that after the old Post Office tower was removed following the earthquake, “the clock was re-erected in [the] new tower in Midway.”

That single sentence answers a question that many locals have wondered about for years.

Yes, the clock in today’s Gisborne Clock Tower is the same clock that once sat high above the 1902 Post Office.

Rather than allowing it to disappear into history, Gisborne gave it a second life.

The Robinson Memorial Clock Tower

The new tower was built as a memorial to long-serving town clerk R. D. B. Robinson, one of the most influential figures in Gisborne’s civic history. The project became known as the Robinson Memorial Clock Tower.

Construction photographs from the 1930s show the tower rising from a scaffold-covered concrete structure in the middle of what was then a much quieter Gladstone Road.

At the top sat a familiar face.

The old Post Office clock.

While the tower was new, the mechanism continued a job it had already been doing for decades.

A Landmark Through the Decades

Gisborne Clock Tower, Gladstone Road, Gisborne NZ

The image shows the Gisborne Clock Tower, present day. Centrally located in plain sight, like a giant exclamation mark. (To the right of the image you can see two 'ghost buildings', The Goverment Life and T&G Buildings, built in the early 1960)s.

The Clock Tower has watched Gisborne change around it.

It has seen horse-drawn vehicles replaced by cars.

It has watched department stores come and go.

It has witnessed parades, protests, celebrations, festivals, rugby victories and more than a few questionable fashion trends.

It survived earthquakes, economic booms, economic busts and countless attempts by locals to explain where exactly “Midway” begins and ends.

Through it all, the tower remained.

More Than Just a Clock

Today the Gisborne Clock Tower is more than a way to tell the time.

It is a link between two eras of Gisborne.

The clock itself dates back to the city’s grand 1902 Post Office. The tower that houses it reflects Gisborne’s resilience and determination to rebuild after one of New Zealand’s most significant natural disasters.

In many ways, it tells the story of Gisborne itself.

A city that changes, adapts and keeps moving forward while still holding on to the pieces of its past that matter.

And if you’re standing underneath it wondering whether you’re late for lunch, just remember:

That clock has been keeping an eye on Gisborne for well over a century.