WGN Spotlight Chicago: Hampden’s First Hand Watchmaking Workshop

Hampden Watch was recently featured on WGN Spotlight Chicago in a segment highlighting First Hand, our hands-on mechanical watchmaking workshop at Hampden’s Chicago headquarters.

The segment brings viewers inside the experience: a small-group class where guests step into the role of watchmaker, assemble a Swiss mechanical movement, case the watch, and leave wearing the piece they built themselves. It is part education, part craft, and part memory-making. For us, that is the point.

First Hand was created for people who want more than a finished object. Over the course of the workshop, guests slow down, work under magnification, learn what makes a mechanical watch come alive, and connect with the kind of craftsmanship that has shaped Hampden for more than a century.

At Hampden, we believe a watch becomes meaningful through the story it carries. Sometimes that story is engraved on the caseback. Sometimes it is the memory of the day you built it. With First Hand, it is both.