When some restoration work was being done a decade ago on the TWA Flight Center, the abandoned space age-looking terminal at Kennedy Airport, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey had a difficult decision: Should the three-sided Vulcain clock that hung over the main concourse be retained? Or was its time up?

The clock had not appeared in the original 1956 plans that Eero Saarinen, the Finnish American architect, presented to Howard Hughes, the owner of Trans World Airlines. And when the Mid-Century Modern terminal building opened in 1962, its only public clock was in the Solari split-flap boards that kept track of departures and arrivals.

But within a year, a Swiss-made clock had been retrofitted under a prominent fluted light fixture in the center of the concourse, where the swooping ceiling arcs of the reinforced concrete structure met. Why? Experts aren’t sure.

“Reportedly, Howard Hughes could not accept a design of an airline terminal without a prominent public clock,” wrote Richard Southwick, the director of historic preservation at Beyer Blinder Belle, the architectural firm that oversaw the building’s two restorations. “So within a year, TWA installed the Vulcain model we see now.”

It remained through the second restoration, in which MCR Hotels turned the building into the 512-room TWA Hotel, which opened in 2019.

Now a version of the clock has been miniaturized and is being sold as the Vulcain TWA Flight Center Desk Clock ($1,300).

Guillaume Laidet, a French consultant working for Vulcain’s owners, the investment group Promobe in Luxembourg, said he saw an old photograph of the concourse, including the clock, that accompanied a 2022 New York Times article.

“I loved the design, so we quickly decided to do something with it,” Mr. Laidet said. Of course the 12.6-centimeter (five-inch) table clock has three quartz clock faces, and its stainless steel form was given a warm light gray coating in an effort to match the beige color of the original clock. The form also mimics the look of the installation, only inverted, so the fluted section has become the clock’s base.

“We wanted to make something different for Vulcain with some true storytelling behind it,” Mr. Laidet said. “Collectors like it when you have a story to tell, and this piece has got people talking about the brand more than the relaunch of the Cricket two and half a years ago.” (Its story: President Harry S. Truman was given a 14-karat gold Vulcain Cricket by the White House Press Photographers Association when he left office in 1953, prompting the nickname “the President’s Watch.”)

Mr. Laidet said preorders for the first batch of clocks would close in late November. “You don’t see a lot of table or desk clocks,” he said. “It’s niche, but it’s cool.”