Downtown Bracebridge keeps time from its prettiest building. The Clock Tower Centre, at the corner of Manitoba Street and Taylor Road, is the town’s historic Federal Post Office and Customs House — designed by David Ewart, Chief Architect of the Department of Public Works, with construction starting in 1913 and the building officially opening on May 4, 1915. It was the first Dominion Government building built in the Muskoka District, a mark of Bracebridge’s importance as the hub for exporting woollen and tanned leather goods.
The clock itself, installed in November 1914, is the landmark: four dials, each four and a half feet across, with hands two and a half feet long, lit by electricity and struck by an 800-pound bell. The post office moved out in 1960, and after intensive renovations — including re-activating the clock — the building reopened as The Clock Tower Centre in November 2015, heritage-designated and now housing artist studios, galleries, boutiques and spas. The rear Armoury, once a drill hall with walls built thick and iron-reinforced to absorb bullets, is a reminder of the building’s other past life.
Part post office, part gallery, part timepiece: the Clock Tower Centre is downtown Bracebridge’s anchor, still telling the town the time more than a century on.