At 12:45 Wednesday afternoon, the clock above Panera Bread Co. at the corner of Sherman Avenue and Church Street read 12:45.

At 1:45, it still read 12:45.

And at 4:10, when Evanston natives Hugh Hoyle, 70, and his wife, Dorothy, 68, walked out of Panera — which used to be the first floor of Evanston’s Marshall Field’s store — the clock still read 12:45.

“That thing hasn’t worked for years,” said Dorothy Hoyle, who has lived with Hugh in Kalamazoo, Mich., for more than 30 years.

“I used to smooch with her under that clock,” Hugh Hoyle added.

The clock will not read 12:45 much longer. Evanston Galleria Investors, the group that owns the building, has commissioned the restoration of the clock. It will be turned on at a public ceremony Nov. 29.

Because the restoration only involved work on the internal aspects of the clock, it did not have to be approved by either the Evanston Preservation Commission or the Sign Review and Appeals Board, Preservation Commission Vice Chairman Michael Girard said. He expressed support for the project.

“It’s great that they want to do it,” he said.

The clock first told time in the 1920s but has not worked for years. The Marshall Field’s building it adorned was a part of a booming Evanston shopping district that withered away after the opening of the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie.

Marshall Field’s shut down its Evanston branch in 1988. The Galleria then turned the building into a condominium.

Boris Vernik of BMC TimeWorks Inc. in Skokie did the repairs on the clock for $15,000.

Eric Blount, the Galleria’s manager, said the clock was restored partly so residents and pedestrians will be able to tell time, but that the historic value also played a role.

“It’s definitely got to do with the fact that it (used to be) the Marshall Field’s building,” Blount said. “(The investors) thought it would be a nice gesture.”