Both clocks are longcase clocks (sometimes called "grandfather clocks").  Most distinctively, they both have wooden cases that arch above the dial to show a disk with a moon that rises and falls in the sky.  Notably though, Image 7 replaces the numbers with Roman numerals, which may be important in some way.

  The hour hand on the hotel clock appears to have a pair of circles that match the circles on the hour hand in the painting.  It would be great if someone could get us a clear, steady close-up of the clock face so we could verify that.

  It seems very likely that the Hotel Monteleone clock was present in the lobby in 1980, but it would also be good to double-check that.  Maybe someone could ask the hotel management?

  Three large, well-known clocks with Roman numerals have been suggested as possible matches for Image 7:

• The clock on the St. Louis Cathedral, overlooking Jackson Square.
• The clock at St Patrick's Church on Camp Street, near Lafayette Square.
• The clock at the Piazza d'Italia on Lafayette Street, a few blocks away from Lafayette Square.

  All three clocks are visible from a distance and all three overlook public gathering places in the city.  Of the three clocks on that list, however, the first two both represent the "4" on the dial as "IIII" rather than "IV." 

  As far as we know, the only large, prominent clock in all of downtown New Orleans that used an "IV" as a "4" in 1980 was the clock at the Piazza.

  The clock face has many subtle but distinctive features that are likely to be clues:

• Because of the mask, the clock only shows the hours 9 to 5 ("business hours") which might be hint toward the Central Business District.
• The mask interrupts the outer and middle circles, but the boy interrupts the inner circles, emphasizing the pattern of concentric circles all missing roughly the same segments.
• There is a small circle at the end of the second hand (?) and then 10 more similar circles between the digits.
• There are dark bars under (inwards from) all the digits except the 12.
• The outer ring has gray boxes at 45, 135, and 270 degrees, but it has a narrow black box at 90 degrees.
• The spacing between the thin lines that cross the outer ring isn't consistent.  It also isn't symmetrical on the two sides.

  The mask in the center of the picture is a very strong match for the face of Louis Armstrong.  Note the prominent cheekbones, the broad nose, the puffiness around the eyes, and the high forehead with little or no hair.

  Louis Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans and is very closely associated with that city.

  The curves in the sleeve appear to match the (reflected) curves of the Mississippi River as it flows through New Orleans. 

  One of the consistent features of all the images in The Secret is that they always include the detailed shape of a nearby shoreline, probably to tie in with the theme of immigrants arriving by water.

  The checkerboard background pattern of the image includes a faint detail that resembles the head of a wolf or a horse.  In the context of the contrasting squares, it looks like the representation of a knight in a game of chess.

  The most common interpretation of the "wolf head" shape is that it represents the outline of Louisiana, as a hint towards the correct state.  Features such as Vermilion Bay and Marsh Island may be visible.

  Another theory for the "wolf head" shape in the checkerboard is that it might represent the head of a horse in some statue downtown. In this case, it would be important to find the right statue because it might help us interpret the grid as a map.

  The best match that has been found so far is the head of the horse that Andrew Jackson is riding in the dark-colored statue in Jackson Square. The statue is located in the middle of the square, in line with the giant clock face on the St. Louis Cathedral.

The plaque under the Andy Jackson statue bears the quote "The union must and shall be preserved," which may be connected to the word in the clock face.

  The grid of squares on the wallpaper suggests that the whole image is a street map.  If so, the moon likely represents the New Orleans Superdome, now renamed the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.  In the perspective shown to the right (where northwest is at the top), the two curving exit ramps in the freeway interchange form arches above the dome similar to the arches at the top of the grandfather clock.

  The Superdome is a distinctive feature of the New Orleans skyline because it looks like the top of an enormous white sphere.  The stadium was completed in 1975, so it would have been a new and notable feature when Preiss was there.  (Super Bowl XV was played in the Superdome on January 25, 1981.) 

  Lafayette Street, which passes through Lafayette Square, points almost-but-not-quite directly at the dome.  The dome is a little bit off to the right, similar to the way the moon is a little bit to the right of the line formed by the clock hands in Image 7.

  Note that the aerial view shown at right puts Jackson Square in the lower right corner, corresponding to where the dark horse head is positioned in Image 7.

If the face of the clock corresponds to this view of the downtown area, with the Superdome and the arches of the freeway at the top, then Preiss appears to be restricting us to the Central Business District (the area between the Superdome and the Mississippi).

Highway 90 is our boundary on the left, Interstate 10 is at the top, and Canal Street is our limit on the right.  The square, green park area in the center of the Central Business District (almost directly below the Superdome in the photo above) is Lafayette Square.

  Lafayette Square is the green space directly below the Superdome in the aerial above.  It is positioned (more or less) in the middle of Lafayette Street which (in 1981) ran for 21 blocks.  Most significantly, Lafayette Square has statues of three standing figures - John McDonogh, Henry Clay, and Benjamin Franklin - which makes it almost a certain match for the lines in Verse 2:

In the middle of twenty-one

From end to end

Only three stand watch

  In Lafayette Square, there's also a geodetic stone which looks a bit like the clock face, with text placed on an arc and the texture. It also contains the longitude and latitude, which also match the numbers on the clock face's corners.

  The John McDonogh Monument in Lafayette Square includes a sculpture of a young boy in period costume with one arm hanging down and one arm lifted up.  The figure on the clock in Image 7 isn't identical, but it could be a stylized interpretation of the monument.

  The McDonogh Monument is located at the western edge of the square, directly across St. Charles Avenue from Gallier Hall.

For more information about the monument and the square, see the photo by Wally Gobetz on Flickr.

  The individual shown on the clock face appears to be wearing the stereotypical outfit of a 19th-century newsboy, including the cap, cravat, and vest.  (For a detailed list of the articles of clothing, see the Boston Costume website.)

  One odd thing to note about the figure from the clock face is the difference in the hands.  The left hand is realistic, with thumb and fingers visible, but the right hand is deformed into some sort of bulging mitt.  It's very similar to a shoe, with the toe and heel visible.  And the the arcs of the circles go from the strange "hand shoe" to the shoe on the person's foot.

  One way in which the figure on the clock differs from either a newsboy or the boy on the McDonogh monument is in his mismatched leggings.  His right leg appears to be wearing knickers and a knee-high sock, but his left leg appears to be wearing a leg of full-length tights with the same argyle or diamond pattern. 

  That left leg gives the person the appearance of a Harlequin, one of the standard characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte.  A Harlequin is traditionally shown wearing a mask and dressed in colorful clothes with a diamond pattern.

Photo used under a Creative Commons License Some rights reserved by Chris Brown

  While the figure's tights do seem to be diamond-patterned, the outline doesn't seem to be as sharp or as consistent as it should be.  Some people have suggested that the diamond-like shapes on the left leg are actually letters spelling out "DIG."

  If this is true, it's not clear how it would advance the search or be a useful clue, given that the casques are already known to be buried.

  If Lafayette Square is the center of our "clock face," St. Charles Avenue runs from there straight into Lee Circle as shown in red in the aerial (top right).  The "second hand" on the clock may be a representation of that if it's rotated 180 degrees as shown (lower right).

  The hairy hand with the long, clawlike fingernails almost certainly represents a werewolf (also known as a loup-garou or a rougarou).  In the myths from France and Germany, werewolfs were humans who turned into the form of wolves whenever they were exposed to the light of the full moon.  This would make sense with the full moon shown at the top of the clock.

  It's possible that the hand of the werewolf is meant to be a subtle clue toward the warehouse district. Many of the other clues in the image and verse also point to that area.

  The hand is the only living thing in the image.  It is front and central, with a bright spotlight coming down from above and a blue light giving it the blue halo from below.  The hand is obviously meant to be the central, important feature of this image.

 Some important things to note:

• The way the hand grasps the pole is awkward and unnatural.  (Try it for yourself and see.)  The arrangement of the fingers must mean something.
• If the whole image is a street map for part of New Orleans, then the pole attached to the mask almost certainly represents streets or blocks running through the street grid. 
• The lower two fingers are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the pole.  They also completely cover the pole.
• The thumb comes in from left and has a split nail, suggesting a forked path. 
• The middle finger comes down at an angle and intersects the thumb.  Note that there is a small triangle of pole visible between the middle and ring fingers.
• The index finger comes down at the same angle (parallel to the middle finger) and leaves a rhombus of pole visible between those fingers.

  There may be several places in the downtown New Orleans street grid where streets at right angles meet streets coming in at a diagonal.  So far though, the best match for the arrangement of fingers on the werewolf's hand is the neighborhood shown at far right.

  The central, narrow strip of green (matching the pole of the mask) is St. Mary's Park.  The street on either side of it is named "Diamond." ("Where jewels abound...")  Note how the upper streets in this perspective cross the park at a diagonal, leaving the park visible between them.  The lower streets are horizontal and have no park visible between them.  And the street in the middle (corresponding to the werewolf's middle finger) comes down and intersects a street that goes off at an angle (like the werewolf's thumb). 

Click on the image at left to see a labeled version that might make the corresponding fingers and streets more clear.

  It's not as perfect a match, but the werewolf's hand on the pole could also be a diagram of the area east of Lafayette Square.  The pole would be Lafayette Street and all the fingers would be the streets that run across it. 

  From bottom to top: Magazine and Constance are close together and orthogonal to Lafayette.  Tchoupitoulas and Peters are more widely spread apart and cross the street at a slant.

  Given the overwhelming evidence in the image and verse that steers us to Lafayette Street, this interpretation of the street diagram is very likely to be correct.

Click on the image at left to see a labeled version that might make the corresponding fingers and streets more clear.

  The Piazza d'Italia is located on Lafayette Street a few blocks from Lafayette Square, between Tchoupitoulas and Peters in the hand diagram above.  It was completed in 1979, which meant it would have been a new and notable landmark in the city when Preiss visited.  Several factors suggest it is well worth a closer look:

- The Piazza is a monument to honor Italian immigrants, and immigration to North America is a central theme of the book.

- The monument consists largely of various pillars in Roman or Italian styles, and page 15 of The Secret says that the Italian spirits left Italy and "sped toward the Pillars of Hercules."

- The monument features a large clock face with roman numerals.

- It also features a nested pair of arches similar to the arches at the top of the clock.  (The upper, larger arch flares off to each side at the base.  The inner, smaller arch does not.)

- Most notably, the entire monument is designed around a series of concentric arcs that go more than halfway around the circle but are interrupted by other features. 

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

Some rights reserved by nola.agent

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

Some rights reserved by nola.agent

Click on any of the photos above to see close-ups.

The concentric circles on the Piazza are interrupted by water features and by a series of terraces that form the shape of Italy.  Seen from above, the innermost circles radiate out from the terraces that form the Calabria region (the "toe" of Italy). 

And, as noted above, the innermost arcs on the face of the clock also radiate out both from a shoe and from a shoe-like shape: the strangely bulging right hand of the stretched-out, arching, oddly-positioned newsboy.  And the newsboy has one stretched-out leg with a diamond pattern that seems to be a reference to Italian culture.

  Anyone studying the Piazza will eventually make the connection: The stretched out newsboy figure on the face of the clock is a representation of the shape of Italy!

  Yes, it's a maddeningly abstract representation, like all the others in The Secret, but it's clear enough.  In addition to the "Calabria hand," the elbow of the other arm even creates the bulge of the Marche region.

  So what about the bulging hand, you ask?  Cleverly enough, if the newsboy is flipped downwards, the hand becomes the Calabria region, the elbow still forms the Marche region, and the arch of the whole body still forms the Italian peninsula.  It works either way.

  Very well done, John Palencar!  Once again, we salute you!

  For anyone who's having trouble keeping track of the New Orleans landmarks in this layout, here's the same aerial view with the main features labeled.

1. The Superdome (the moon in Image 7).
2. Lee Circle and St. Charles Avenue, which together form a shape like the "second hand" on the clock.
3. The blocks where St. Mary's Park runs between north and south Diamond streets.
4. Lafayette Street, which (in 1981) ran a total of 21 blocks from one end to another.
5. Lafayette Square, where the three statues stand watch and one monument has the boy with outstretched arms.
6. Piazza d'Italia, which has the pillars, arches, clock, and concentric circles.
7. Place St. Charles, where the St. Charles Hotel once stood.
8. Hotel Monteleone, where the grandfather clock is in the lobby.
9. Jackson Square, where there's a black horse with an open mouth.
10. Preservation Hall.
11. Armstrong Park.

Note that, in a truly bizarre coincidence, St. Mary's Park currently runs into a building with "PRESERVATION" in big letters on the side.  It looks like a clue, but it's not, because the Preservation Resource Center only purchased the building in March of 1998.  Prior to that, the Preservation Resource Center was located in a row house at 604 Julia St.

  One major part of the puzzle that has not yet been explained is the outer ring of the clock face.  It has two arrows that start on either side of the mask and sweep around to point at either end of "Preservation."

We don't yet know exactly how to interpret the outer ring, but we can make some reasonable guesses:

• The arrows are probably telling us to go in a certain direction.
• Because the arrows start on either side of the mask, we are probably meant to start on either side of where the concentric circles are interrupted in the Piazza.  That means starting on Lafayette Street and on South Peters Street.
• The lines form curves around the clocks, but we obviously aren't expected to curve through the downtown area.  We are supposed to go in straight lines along streets.
• If the short, narrow lines are streets we cross along our route, then the gray and black boxes probably indicate turns.
• Puzzles in The Secret seem to emphasize the exploration of neighborhoods on foot.  If that's still the case here, we don't need to worry about which way we go down one-way streets. We are meant to make this journey by walking along the route.

  That's a lot of assumptions and any or all of them could be wrong.  But if those interpretations are correct, we have two patterns:

• Arrow A: Start mid-block, cross two streets, turn at the third street, cross four more streets, PRESERVATION.
• Arrow B: Start mid-block, cross two streets, turn at the third street, cross two more streets, turn at the sixth street, cross two more streets, turn at the ninth street, PRESERVATION.

  Most of the background wallpaper is composed of fairly consistent rectangles.  But there's one spot in the lower right corner where the lines suddenly slant and the rectangle is replaced by a rhombus or diamond. 

  If the lines and boxes represent the street grid of the downtown area, the best match for the diamond pattern and the adjoining block is the area between St. Charles and Camp near Lafayette Square.

This is the diamond shape from the wallpaper (rotated to align with the map display).

The diamond block that matches the wallpaper grid is directly across St. Charles Avenue from the site of the former St. Charles Hotel.

  The newsboy figure on the clock appears to be deliberately pointing and drawing our attention to a spot on the calf of his leg.  It might be a signal toward the top and central spot on the hourglass shape, in which case it would be a reference to Lafayette Square and the John McDonogh Monument (as a hint to help us find the statue). 

  But if the socks (or tights) have a diamond pattern, the newsboy may also be drawing our attention to a dark-colored diamond, which might be the diamond shape in the wallpaper.

  The strange shape on the werewolf's hand is too sharp and too emphasized to just be random wrinkles.  This shape must represent something, and it's probably a crucial part of the solution.

  The arrows pointing at "PRESERVATION" may indicate that the left and right portions of the outer rim represent the features of two one-way streets.  If so, the boxes and lines may represent intersections.  This may be the same technique Palencar used in Image 11, where the features of a straight sidewalk were shown curved into the rim of a circle.

  The word "PRESERVATION" at the top of the clock, coupled with the flared, bluish-purple sleeve on the werewolf, has always seemed like a very strong clue towards Preservation Hall jazz club in New Orleans.

  Preservation Hall is on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter, about a block from the St. Louis Cathedral.

  It's possible, however, that the connection between "PRESERVATION" and Preservation Hall is a deliberate red herring and the word may actually refer to the lesser-known Preservation Resource Center, which was founded in 1974.

  The Preservation Resource Center is currently located at the end of St. Mary's Park, but that address cannot be part of the solution because the building was only purchased by the PRC in March of 1998.  Prior to that, the Preservation Resource Center was located in a row house at 604 Julia St.

  The St. Charles Hotel was torn down just a few years before Preiss visited, in what was seen as a major blow to historic preservation.

(Source: Preservation in Print, April 2015)

  The arch at the top of the clock is similar to the arch at Louis Armstrong Park.  There is a broad arch above, echoed by a smaller arch below.  Both arches have white circles and have areas of shadow cast by an overhang.

  The gate is located at the St. Ann Street entrance on the southeast side of the park.

  Alternatively, there are lots of horse head shaped 'hitching posts' around the French Quarter.

There is no clear interpretation for the "19" in the upper left corner. One possibility is that it isn't really a "19" at all.  Unlike the numbers in the other two visible corners of the clock face, the "9" here is not clearly in line with the digit beside it.  Instead, the "9" is nudged slightly upwards, as if to set it apart from the "1" and indicate that these are two separate digits, rather than a single two-digit number.  It could be telling us to take 9 steps or paces in one direction and then 1 in another.  Or it could indicate an intersection between the first column and the ninth row.