A sign in the window of the Cranston location of the Providence Watch Hospital on Monday said the shop was closed due to Illness.

The Journal Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — A state receivership filing made late Friday means that the shuttering of a nearly 70-year-old watch repair business, and its even older parent company.

Speidel, the 105-year-old watchband distributor and onetime manufacturer, on Friday made the filing in state Superior Court, Providence, taking along with it its Providence Watch Hospital subsidiary, founded in 1940.

People who have ordered goods at the Providence Watch Hospital, or left items for repair, will be notified within two weeks about how to claim their pieces, according to the Providence lawyer now handling Speidel’s operations.

“We’re not in a position to reopen during the receivership,” Providence lawyer Allan M. Shine said.

Speidel has had several owners over the past century. The company was purchased two years ago by Frederick N. Levinger.

The 47 employees of the two privately held businesses learned of the receivership Friday, when an annual summer shutdown was set to begin. They will receive their pay, benefits and vacation compensation through the end of last week, and their health benefits will continue to the end of July, according to Shine, who has been appointed temporary receiver for Speidel.

A receivership is the liquidation of an insolvent business overseen by the state’s Superior Court. The lawyer-appointed receiver is authorized to keep the business running until it can be sold or to close it and sell off its assets.

Headquartered in Cranston, Speidel also owns the watch repair and sales business with retail shops in Cranston, at the Garden City Center, and in South Kingstown, on Old Tower Hill Road. Shine said his office will send letters to Providence Watch Hospital customers letting them know how to retrieve their items.

The Providence Watch Hospital opened in 1940. Its seven watchmakers and five technicians service 55,000 timepieces annually.

Founded in 1904, on Ship Street in Providence, Speidel was once owned by Paul Levinger, the father of the current owner, Frederick N. Levinger.

Speidel was bought in 1997 by an Austrian company, which shuttered the company’s Providence headquarters and its manufacturing operation.

A former Speidel executive, Jeffrey Massotti, bought Speidel in 2002, employing nearly 150 people in Rhode Island at what had become a watchband distributor. Frederick Levinger purchased the business from Massotti about two years ago, but was unable to make a go of it.

pgrimald@projo.com