Sapporo Clock Tower

The Sapporo Clock Tower features a stark white wooden exterior with a roof topped by a red-faced, four-sided clock. Built in eighteen seventy-eight, it served as a military drill hall for the Sapporo Agricultural College. William Wheeler, an American professor, designed the structure to include a clock from Boston. The mechanism still ticks today, powered by weights that workers wind by hand. It stands as the oldest building in the city, surviving urban fires and the pressures of rapid modernization.