I grew up with a noon whistle. I grew up near Folsom State Prison, which had one. I don’t have one now, but I vaguely miss it, now that you mention it. That said, I never used it as a trigger for eating lunch or anything–it just served as a nice anchor point for the day.
Our air raid sirens were tested daily at noon. For a while it made you check a clock to make sure there wasn’t a bear in the air. After we had a tornado come through some wise civic worker realized those were more likely than getting nuked, so the air raid sirens became tornado warning sirens. Then they put in some really fucking loud sirens and stopped testing them daily to save our hearing.
Depends. Ours is the fire horn at the station. It blares when there’s an emergency and they need the volunteers to roll in, and it sounds once everyday at noon.
Yes.
Another upstate NY’er at heart checking in. We had one in Mayville NY at least until the early 90s. I didn’t hear one at the various other places I’ve lived in NYS but that may have been because I was too far from the village center or in too big a city, so for all I know they may still be doing it.
Before the 1960s-70s, it was a factory thing.
I was born in the 80’s and grew up in a rural farming community north of Minneapolis. Every night there was a siren at 9pm that came from the fire station in town. I’m not sure when it stopped. Maybe the mid 90’s?
Every day at noon they set off the fire siren in the small Kentucky town where I grew up. In summer it did indeed call us home to lunch. Much dog-howling accompanied the siren. Often we were told to come home when the Angelus was rung at Church at 6 pm too.
I’ll have to ask a friend who still lives there if they’re still doing it.
I grew up with a noon whistle. It was the same system used to warn of tornadoes but the noon whistle sounded different; it would go from quieter to louder and repeat three times. The tornado warning went from quieter to louder but then sustained forever. The town I live in now doesn’t have have a noon whistle; they do test their tornado warning system on the first Wednesday of every month at 1 pm.
Every Wed at Noon they test the sirens. I’ve heard it for as long as I can remember.
friedo beat me to it. 
They can be any and all of the aforementioned. 
Where I grew up (Garden City Park, NY), the volunteer Fire Department tested their alarm every day at noon. They discontinued it for a while due to complaints from the neighbors, but recently reinstated the practice.
Where I live now (Lusby, MD) we have the nuclear power plant meltdown siren that they test on the first of every month at noon. Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant is about 5 miles away.
So then what’s the point? No really.
To tell you when to go to work, what time it is, or when the Ruskies are coming, respectively. Or sometimes to tell you when there’s a tornado or fire.
In the case of factories before the 1970s, it probably signaled lunch for the employees…
Ours is on the fire station. I think it’s a way for the fire station to test the alarm and to make sure the community knows what the sound is (in case of a real emergency). It’s become a quaint custom that people enjoy. Until recently the siren would sound in the morning if school was cancelled due to snow. 
Quaint.
Grew up with one at noon and one at 6 pm, Monday through Saturday. The town I now live in has one at 7 freakin’ AM! as well at noon and 6 pm and that’s 7 days a week all year 'round.
In my hometown, they sounded the curfew one at 10 or 9 depending on how many times they resurrected the curfew ordinance. They finally did away with it altogether when they figured out nobody followed it anyway.
Same with ours, although they still occasionally use it to call the volunteer firefighters. It’s very annoying in the middle of the night.
That’s what they did in my hometown when I was a kid, but they don’t seem to use them for that very much in the town I now live in.
I actually think they do blow it because they think noon (and 6 pm and 7 freakin’ am) are important. At least I’ve never heard it mentioned that it is a test and why would they need to test it 2 or 3 times a day?
I’m so blessed that I can hear three different noon signals at my house.
First is the tornado siren at the Fillmore fire station, then the one in Boltonville, and then Silver Creek. When I’m working in the yard, the siren reminds me to take a break during the heat of the day.
If I’m outside with my 3 year old, he knows it as “the nap whistle”.
Never heard one myself; but when Chernenko was buried in Red Square all factory whistles, and those of trains and ships were sounded for five full minutes across the USSR.
Maybe they did for the other old sickly buggers who were dropping like flies at the time, but an impressive gesture nonetheless.