The old courthouse clock and bell, both installed atop the 1894 Waller County Courthouse designed by Arthur Osborne Watson and constructed by M. Clark of Galveston with help from the Seth Thomas Clock Company of Chicago and tower clock expert Walter Buckley, were important functional adornments of the building. The 1000-pound bell was cast in 1894 by the McShane Bell Foundry of Baltimore, MD, for Waller County, and on July 24, 1894, the county accepted the clock and bell at a cost of $900.00. The Seth Thomas clock had four iron dials with wood backing, an eight-foot octagonal rosewood pendulum rod with a massive cylindrical weight, and a mechanism powered by 1300 pounds of weights suspended from pulleys. In 1947 the clock was electrified and a motor was installed to drive the clock and bell. When the courthouse was demolished in 1954, most of the clock and bell were saved, and in 1955 the clock mechanism was moved to the current courthouse, where it was used to drive the bell, which continued to strike the hours from an open frame on the building's roof until 1971, when the mechanism controlling the bell broke and was not repaired. In 1991 the Waller County Historical Society, with the vision of Marjorie Senasac, authorized restoration of the clock mechanism and restoration of the bell, and Susan Hopkins and Burt and Mildred Leonard chaired the first fundraiser, "One moment in time," to raise money to begin the restoration. Lloyd Larish, owner and Master Tower Clock Repairman of the House of Clocks of Faribault, MN, restored the clock in 1997. Construction of a new clock tower began in October 1998 and was slated for completion by April of the next year, but halted for several years, during which the clockworks were displayed in the courthouse lobby until December 2010. The tower project was revived in 2008, construction began again in June 2009 with installation of the clock and new restoration of the bell, and the tower was completed in July 2012.