Hollar Round Door Vaults

Doug MacQueen · 2010-01-15T17:38:36+00:00

Here’s a couple very nice round doors made under Hollar’s patent from the early 1900’s. Hollar was a famous vault designer of Philadelphia, PA. The one with Hollar’s patent automatic timelock winder above the timelock is a Hall’s (Jos. Hall’s sons) of Cincinnati, Ohio. The other is a L.H. Miller of Baltimore, Maryland whose father E.F. Miller was also in the safe business in Providence R.I. Both of these doors are using Yale Automatics, mentioned in John Erroll’s book, American Genius.

wylk

Another departed vault is the former Marshall & Ilsey Bank in Milwaukee. The bank was in business from 1847 until 2010 when it was absorbed by a Montreal bank. I don’t know the precise location of this particular vault but the candidate buildings in the vicinity of Water Street and Wisconsin Street are all too new, or gone.

Above are two postcards. In the second one, it isn’t all that clear which building is supposed to be the M&I building. An old newspaper article from 1913 describes their new home, and the first postcard looks reasonable for that era (and Hollar was probably still in business though not for much longer).

wylk

In the book American Genius there is a picture on page 276 of a vault plaque circa 1900. No other information is given but it does establish that Hollar worked with Damon (among others).

I did some image processing to increase contrast hoping it would be a little more readable.

wylk

Here is a list of Hollar patents. I think this concludes what I have on Hollar (so far).

290,052 Burglar Proof Safe, William Henry Hollar (5/28/1883, 12/11/1883)

459,226 Safe or Vault, William H Hollar (4/23/1891, 9/8/1891)

477,897 Electric Lock, William H. Hollar and Frederick S. Holmes (⅔/1890, 6/28/1892), assigned to James W. Torrey of Merchantville, New Jersey

477,898 Electric Lock, William H. Hollar and Frederick S. Holmes (⅔/1890, 6/28/1892), assigned to James W. Torrey of Merchantville, New Jersey

518,453 Safe Lock (adjustable bolt seating), William H. Hollar (4/18/1892, 4/17/1894)

533,298 Bolt Mechanism for Safes (rectangular doors), William H. Hollar (2/23/1894, 1/29/1895)

533,299 Bearing for Safe Bolt Work, William H. Hollar (10/20/1894, 1/29/1895)

545,020 Electrically Controlled Winding Mechanism for Time Locks, William H. Hollar and George L. Weaver and Anthony Kennedy (4/1/1895, 8/20/1895)

545,021 Electric Winder for Time Locks, William H. Hollar and George L. Weaver and Anthony Kennedy (4/17/1895, 8/20/1895)

571,319 Stop Mechanism for Time Locks, William H. Hollar and Harry W. Pidgeon (12/27/1895, 11/10/1896)

591,188 Safe, William H. Hollar and Anthony Kennedy (2/15/1897, 10/5/1897)

621,340 Burglar Proof Safe, William H. Hollar (8/11/1898, 3/21/1899)

621,341 Safe Boltwork (round door), William H. Hollar and Anthony Kennedy (6/11/1898, 3/21/1899)

650,842 Electrically Controlled Winding Mechanism for Time Locks, William Henry Hollar and Alonzo L. Rhodes (3/10/1899, 6/5/1900)

659,445 Time Lock, William H. Hollar and Anthony Kennedy and Alonzo L. Rhodes (7/28/1899, 10/9/1900)

662,789 Interlocking Device for Safe Doors, William H. Hollar and W. Corry (5/31/1900, 11/27/1900)

686,073 Electrically Controlled Combination Lock, William Henry Hollar and Alonzo L. Rhodes (3/20/1901, 11/5/1901)

713,883 Safe, William Henry Hollar (2/4/1902, 11/18/1902)

737,840 Electric Lock, William H. Hollar (3/10/1902, 9/1/1903)

789,217 Bolt Frame for Safes or Vaults (12/5/1900, 5/9/1905)

841,398 Vault (ventilation), William H. Hollar (10/13/1906, 1/15/1907)

977,307 Vault, William H. Hollar and Walter Rees and Harry F. Balou (3/3/1909, 11/29/1910)

1,007,568 Vault (heating/cooling the door to effect a seal), William H. Hollar (3/3/1911, 10/31/1911)

1,051,588 Electrically Controlled Lock, William H. Hollar and Harry F. Balou (6/3/1909, 1/28/1913)

1,053,815 Vault, William H. Hollar (10/31/1912, 2/18/1913)

1,238,073 Automobile Fuel Tank, William H. Hollar, deceased (6/12/1914, 8/21/1917)

1,309,200 Vault (reinforcing walls using railroad rails), William H. Hollar (8/2/1916, ⅞/1919)

1,425,324 Safe or Vault Wall, Anthony Kennedy (11/15/1918, 8/8/1922), assigned to the Hollar Company

1,489,946 Vault, Anthony Kennedy (⅗/1921, 4/8/1924), assigned one-half to the Hollar Company

1,605,444 Vault, Anthony Kennedy (11/8/1923, 11/2/1926), assigned one-half to the Hollar Company

1,633,369 Envelope (tamper evident), William H. Hollar Jr. (6/12/1926, 6/21/1927)

1,682,755 Key Envelope, William H. Hollar Jr., Walter G. Uhlman (8/3/1926, 9/4/1928)

2,059,919 Electric Combination Lock, Edmund E. Teubner (1/24/1936, 11/3/1936), assigned to The Hollar Company

Doug MacQueen

Again, excellent work. Here are a couple more pics of the Cleveland Trust bank. Doug

Doug MacQueen

And a few more of the Pittsburgh bank. As you can see someone did not do such a great job on the door face but as the door normally stands wide open, the inside more than makes up for it. Doug

wylk

I stumbled across a separate list of Hollar patents I started a couple of years ago, then forgot. Oops. It did have a few more patents not included in my earlier post, so here they are:

438,236 Electric Safe Lock, William H. Hollar and Frederick S. Holmes (⅔/1890, 10/14/1890), assigned to James W. Torrey of Merchantville, New Jersey

649,693 Safe or Vault, William H. Hollar (7/26/1899, 5/15/1900)

688,119 Electrically Controlled Mechanism for Time Locks, Walter Rees of Philadelphia (8/16/1901, 12/3/1901), assigned to William H. Hollar of Philadelphia

775,674 Vault, Thomas H. Given and William H. Hollar (6/27/1903, 11/22/1904), assigned to Hollar

902,244 Electrically Controlled Lock, Edward W. Marvel of Philadelphia (5/12/1908, 10/27/1908), assigned to Hollar

1,105,272 Automobile Fuel Tank, William H. Hollar (4/12/1910, 7/28/1914)

wylk

Doug, thanks for your additional images of the Cleveland Trust, especially of the roller bearing for the bolts (your IMG_3171). Compare that to US patent 533,299 which suggests a slightly different arrangement that might have resulted in lower friction, a big point with an automatic bolt motor:

I have no idea if these were ever used, or if they were an actual improvement over the curved-roller style. I vaguely recall another patent that used a single ball plus a groove in the bolt but I can’t seem to find it.

wylk

I found the other patent (US 1,444,446) I was thinking of, for bolt bearings. This uses a roller in a groove in the bolt. The inventor is Carl Bartels, and the patent is assigned to Mosler. It seems to me this requires more machining than Hollar’s ball-bearing version but is better shielded from dust accumulation.

wylk

Not Hollar, but here is another example of roller bearings in boltwork:

This is a 1953 image of a Mosler door along with president Edwin H. Mosler, Jr. You can see some of the roller bearings that support the bolts. Especially note at the top you can see they used two bearings, not just one. As another detail, the bolt pattern is rotated by half. That is, there is not a vertical bolt at 12:00; instead there is one at 11:45 and one at 00:15 (assuming I did the math correctly). I can only guess this allowed all the bolts to rest on bearings, and it might also have resolved other geometry problems such as placing the bolt handle at 9:00 but not bumping into the 9:00 bolt.

These images are from an eBay auction, hence the “watermarks.”

wylk

I found an article on the re-opening of the Cleveland Trust Rotunda as “Vault,” a social club with four vaults used as private rooms. Quite a few images. See http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/09/party_like_its_1929_the_openin.html and http://www.freshwatercleveland.com/devnews/the9building072114.aspx and of course their own web site http://www.the9cleveland.com/vault.html. The images clarify that Hollar, York, and National Safe were all involved in providing our favorite hardware. One of the images is particularly good at showing off the roller bearings:

In true Google quirkiness, I wasn’t even looking for this. I was trying to find images of the Bank of D.O. Mills and Company in Sacramento (more specifically, vault images).

wylk

Something missing in the story of Hollar is what happened to the company. William Hollar seems to have passed away by 1917 though he had a son (William Junior) whose name appears on some of the last Hollar patents. It also appears that Hollar may not have manufactured vault doors, but instead sub-contracted to Mosler and others. I was thinking about this while reading the September 1922 issue of the Mosler Messenger (https://archive.org/details/MoslerMessengerSeptember1922) which included this image of the Merchants National Bank in Los Angeles (548 S Spring Street, now “SB Lofts”). While the article discusses round Manganese doors (plural) and the caption states “Vaults by the Mosler Safe Company,” to my eyes this is a Hollar door.

I’m tempted to think that Mosler ended up taking over the Hollar company and continued to market their products for a time, but I have no direct evidence. Some doors have plates clearly stating it was made by Mosler and designed by Hollar but this one seems to credited entirely to Mosler, and years after William died. But then again this is a Mosler publication and they might have conveniently omitted Hollar’s name. Also, the building was constructed in 1913 so the Mosler Messenger article might have been printed years later.

Doug MacQueen

I have never gotten the impression that Hollar manufactured the doors, only that he designed them. Same goes for the Strauss doors. It is very likely that the Hollar company did get absorbed by one of the bigger companies, Mosler, Diebold, York or HHM. Doug

Huw Eastwood

That’s typical of heavy industry and engineering in general- only the ‘big’ manufacturers would’ve had vertical lathes and mills capable of machining the large doors, and the same goes for the foundry work involved with the castings. We know that York made the giant Cleveland Fed door, and I’m sure had impressive casting facilities, but I bet their foundry didn’t produce the Cleveland Fed casting from which it was machined.

From looking at the Strauss and Hollar doors and the name plates they had fitted I’ve also got the impression they were just engineers and designers, and the heavy work was done by someone else.

VaultDoors

Here are a couple more:

620,073 - SAFE, Frederick S. Holmes (4/24/1897, 2/21/1899), Assignor to William H. Hollar

1,369,660 - SAFE OR VAULT DOOR, William H. Hollar, Jr. (6/20/1919, 2/22/1921)

wylk

VaultDoors wrote
Here are a couple more:

620,073 - SAFE, Frederick S. Holmes (4/24/1897, 2/21/1899), Assignor to William H. Hollar

1,369,660 - SAFE OR VAULT DOOR, William H. Hollar, Jr. (6/20/1919, 2/22/1921)

Cool! Thanks for the additions.

[unknown]

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