Six Main is the newest restaurant in Chester Center. As a vegan, vegetarian, farm-to-table restaurant, it offers the newest concept in healthy dining. And it has longtime Chester residents excited-they welcome the new enterprise and wish it great success.

It's not something new that has residents talking, however, but rather the return of a tradition. There in the tower of the former Chester Bank-now the location of Six Main-is a new clock.

Some memories don't fade. The yellow brick building at the center of town is still referred to as the Chester Bank building and its tower still referred to as the clock tower, although the bank and its original 1918 hand-wound clock departed approximately two decades ago. Every resident who remembers the bank and the clock has a story. When driving through the center of town, Pete Zanardi would always look up at the lighted clock to see if he was late getting home. So did so many other residents.

When the building's new owner, Bill DeJonge of Old Lyme, decided he wanted to open a restaurant in the former bank, he brought his designs and ideas to the Planning & Zoning Commission. During the course of the public hearing and in his visits with downtown neighbors, he began to hear stories about the bank and its clock.

"They were cute stories, interesting stories, and I thought it would be just the perfect thing to bring the clock back. It would be my way of giving something back to the town," DeJonge said.

He did some research. He discovered that when the bank moved out of its downtown location to a new building on Middlesex Turnpike, it donated the antique clock to the town.

Today that clock, in a specially built cabinet, sits outside the first selectman's office in the Town Hall. This is the inscription DeJonge found on it: "Seth Thomas 1918. This clock was given to the Chester Trust Co. Nov. 17, 1917 by Mary Wright Brooks in memory of her husband Simeon Spencer Brooks."

DeJogne turned to Deep River's Mark Strempel, who had renovated the original clock for the town, to ask about a replacement. Strempel sent him to Martin Cook in Higganum.

"After climbing to the bank's second floor to look at the opening, he had a clock made for us and installed. It is a replica of the original face," DeJonge explained.

The new clock is backlit with the same light fixture that once lit the original.

"The nice thing about this clock is that it's electrical. No one has to climb up here every day to wind it," he added.

There are many in Chester who remember the original clock in its tower. One is Bruce Watrous, who worked at the bank for many years.

"The clock had wires and weights and you cranked it up and it worked. I never remember it being repaired. It always seemed to be in perfect working order if it was wound once a week," he recalled.

And a bit of history about the bank. According to Watrous, the yellow brick building in the center of town was built in the early 1900s. The original Chester Savings Bank was formed as a mutual savings bank in 1871. For many years, there were no other banks in town. Eventually local businessmen saw the need for a commercial bank and formed the Chester Trust Company. For years after that, the two banks shared the same building and the same staff. Sometime in the late '70s, the banks merged.

"Mr. DeJonge has also donated to the Chester Historical Society the two millstones that sat at the front of the bank building just right of the front steps," Watrous said. "Our motto used to be 'Chester Bank at the millstones.'"

The 400- to 500-pound millstones, once used to grind corn, are believed to have come from a mill on Goose Hill.

"The new restaurant and the new building owner are a positive for Chester," Watrous said.

Old Building, New Purpose

DeJonge purchased the former Chester Bank building in the middle of last year with the intention of opening a restaurant and specifically a "healthy food, plant-based" restaurant.

"I began eating healthier, as a vegan. I found it tasted so good, and was so beneficial, and I discovered more and more people were doing the same, that I decided I could make this more easily available to more people. I thought a restaurant would work," he said.

DeJonge had started to link his ideas together after buying a six-acre farm in Old Lyme. He began raising sheep and then growing organic produce. He thought he could supply a restaurant with fresh and sustainably grown food. He had a building. He had an idea. He had a farm. He went looking for a chef.

"When I found the right chef, I knew I'd move ahead with the restaurant. I wanted someone who had run a restaurant before, who wanted to own and grow a restaurant, who would make a commitment," and who also shared his passion for healthy dining, DeJonge said.

He found Rachel Carr, an award-winning West Coast chef. The plan was on.

From January to June 2, from the first designs to its opening night, DeJonge and Carr set to work.

"We came pretty close to gutting the interior. There are new stairways, new entrances, a lot of work," he said.

Some of it was challenging. Not surprisingly, the former bank has brick walls two inches thick, and it has three vaults.

"We are not sure what to do with those yet," DeJonge said.

The building contained other artifacts. A huge walnut mirror graces one wall of the restaurant. The former night depository box has been rebuilt and repurposed. It now serves as the outside menu display box.

"Finding these artifacts, finding a use for them, learning a bit of the bank's history has been fun, and Chester has welcomed us," DeJogne said.

To learn about the restaurant's philosophy, menu, and its chef, visit www.sixmain.com.