Downtown’s Jewelry Doctor Will Save Your Favorite Heirloom

If your beloved vintage watch or great-grandmother’s necklace breaks, you don’t want to take it to just anyone to fix — you want to take it to one of Lower Manhattan’s excellent watch and jewelry repair shops. Charles Patrick Jewelers is one such neighborhood standout, offering incredible (and speedy!) service for all your heirlooms and fine goods.

Head up to the mezzanine level at 14 Wall St. and you’ll find Charles Patrick’s shop tucked away to the left of the staircase, a cozy and welcoming space decorated with eclectic art and decor. Patrick, who was trained at the Bulova School of Watchmaking and is also a certified gemologist, has been downtown for decades. He got his start at H.L. Gross and Brothers — a company founded in 1910 which “had prominence and was very upscale” — in Lower Manhattan shortly after graduating in the 1980s. 

After a few years of on-the-job training, Patrick opened his own shop around 1986 at 15 Maiden Ln. near the Federal Reserve. He moved around a little — he’s been at 14 Wall St. on and off for about 30 years, though he also had a decade-long stint at 120 Broadway — but has stayed downtown throughout. Though the neighborhood, he says, has changed quite a bit since he first got into the business.

“What I liked about this area, from the first time I got here, was that it was a five-day work week,” he said. “Friday after 4:30, this area was dead.”

Now, of course, downtown is much more of a 24/7 neighborhood, and though the influx of residents has brought new business, some of the regular weekday officeworker traffic Patrick once enjoyed has diminished with the increase in remote work. Still, Patrick says his longtime Lower Manhattan tenure is one of the best parts of his job.

“The neighborhood has almost become a part of me because I’ve been there so long,” he said. “I could call myself ‘the neighborhood jeweler.’”

Patrick loves his loyal customers, who’ve been bringing their jewelry and watches to him for repairs and upkeep for years.

“I’ve gained the trust of my customers so they wouldn’t use anyone but me,” he said, noting that he even has customers who’ve long left New York who will still mail him things to fix from across the country. He also thrives on word-of-mouth and in-family recommendations. “I feel like a doctor. People refer the first generation to the second generation and that type of stuff,” he said. 

Patrick can repair almost anything, from Rolexes and Pateks to delicate jewelry, and he thrives on being able to fix the unfixable.

“We like when someone says, ‘I went to three people and they couldn’t do it.’ That motivates me to just try to do the impossible,” he said. He offers fair prices, quick turnaround times (including same-day or next-day service on easy repairs) and stays open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. so folks with offices in the neighborhood can drop off their goods before work and pick them up on their way home.

In addition to pristine jewelry and watch repairs that Patrick once described as on-the-spot “open surgery,” he also designs custom pieces, and even works with a few brokerage houses on corporate pieces like special cufflinks for longtime employees.  

And though he specializes in high-end repairs, he’ll work as hard to save your favorite childhood Timex watch as he will a Bulova Accutron. Expensive pieces are important, but mementos, he says, are priceless.

“If it has significance to you, it’s important to me,” he said, “Even if people are bringing in a piece of costume jewelry [it might be] the last thing they got from their relative, their loved one.”

“I think it’s very important that we not only utilize jewelry, but actually take something as a legacy,” he said.