A little more from Inside Man. I mentioned that the combination locks on the large door might be partially hidden behind the boltwork, below is a screen shot showing this.
In the movie is a smaller vault with a rectangular door (it looks like a York) that houses the safe deposit boxes.
But here’s the odd part: At the time such banks were built (1929-1931 in this case) the round-door vault was normally the safe deposit vault, and the huge door provided a striking visual effect for customers along with a large entrance; the vault with the smaller opening was used by the bank for cash and records. But in the movie this is reversed.
My speculation is this: When the building was constructed, usage was as described. In 1989 the bank (now named Citibank) closed this branch at 20 Exchange Place. It is fairly common to remove safe deposit boxes as groups (without opening the boxes) and relocate them to a new vault, rather than try to round up all the owners. This would have left the original round-door vault empty. When the filming crew had to outfit a vault for the movie, they filled the smaller vault with boxes. A very minor “oops” and admittedly just an educated guess.
