Tick, tock, big New York clock is docked

NEW YORK, April 13 (UPI) -- The landmark National Debt Clock, which displays the value of America's national debt, has been torn down from New York City's 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue.

The icon, installed in 1989 when the debt was $2.7 million, was taken down because it was attached to a three-story building that will be demolished and replaced by a skyscraper, the New York Post said Monday.

"It'll be going back up in a month" in another location, Douglas Durst, president of the Durst Organization, told the Post. It was Durst's father, the late Seymour Durst, who put up the original clock.

Its replacement, a digital clock the size of a billboard, will be displayed at 1133 Sixth Ave., one block north of the old site.

In May, the readout on the new clock will exceed $7 trillion.

"The numbers are there to be helpful in reminding people and because my father thought it necessary to tell people how big the debt actually is," Durst told the Post.