Vault with very deep floor

wylk

Here’s something unusual, a question about flooring rather than a door. The following image is supposedly of a vault at 14 Wall Street in NYC (see http://www.lmcc.net/spaces/14_wall_street and http://www.flickr.com/photos/65688835@N04/6304174688/in/photostream) –

As you can see, there is a semi-circular section of flooring that can be dropped to allow the door to open or close. The first odd thing I noticed was that the two locks are very close to floor level. Then I noticed that the lower pressure bar is too. Next, notice how tall the upper door hinge is, and that only the upper end of the lower hinge is exposed. It looks like a tall person might have to bend over to get through the doorway. This tells me that the floor is very deep and covers a significant fraction of the door and frame. Why? I’ve seen deep flooring like this in data centers to allow lots of air flow, plumbing, and wiring, but why would this be the case for a vault?

For comparison here are a couple of images (by Adam Crowley) of a Mosler door at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank:

In the second image you can even see the bottom edge of the door. The floor is (or could be) very shallow. This is what seems normal.

Comments?

Chris Belcher

Hi Wylk
Looking at your pics , I get the impression that the system is there to lower the door when it is in the open position. It is only guesswork to assume that this is purely to protect anyone entering from being locked in inadvertantly. In the lowered position the locks would appear to be rather low, it depends on the size of the door
.

Ian D. Lewis

Hi Wylk. These are very interesting pictures. The first one to me looks like a disused door as the concrete meets the contours of the frame and show no signs of being able to be moved, the frame is even slightly rusty were the concrete meets it. The second and third pictures look to me like they are a series of inspection panels that can be lifted to work on the carriages etc. I believe that it is possible that the only floor section that move would be the one inside the vestibule which would lower to allow the bottom up/down bolts to engage behind the frame and then rise to bridge the vents in front of the door frame. the floor panel on the left of picture 2 looks like a safety feature the rises when the door is closed to pevent someone tripping ove the step.

Doug MacQueen

That is a curious one. And one thick door, possibly 36″. I see the glass access door includes what looks to be an original factory installed kickplate section at the lower end. The smaller floor plates are usually hinged to be folded over, prior to dropping the the main section. Possibly the ventilation plenums were under the floor? At the rear of the vault they appear to be coming up from the under the floor. It does look to be a fairly late version of the classic style door, Mosler I believe. Doug

wylk

I’m leaning towards Ian’s observation that the door (14 Wall Street) may no longer be functional. It could be that the space was modified (post-banking) which included raising the floor to create more room for ventilation and/or other details. What surprises me, still, if that’s the case, is that it looks like they lifted the original floor which would explain the semi-circular arc leftover from the original drop-down.

I can certainly understand their hesitance to try to remove the door!

As another detail, notice the 5-point electrical contact (hinge side, between the pressure bars) that kicks in when the door is closed, to connect to the alarm system.

wylk

I thought I should add more context to the 14 Wall Street location. This was originally the Bankers Trust Company Building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14_Wall_Street and http://www.emporis.com/building/14wall-newyorkcity-ny-usa) built in 1910-1912 though the image could be from an addition 1931-1933. The building is now used for swing space (http://www.lmcc.net/spaces/14_wall_street) as well as office and retail. This part of Wall Street is blocked for most vehicular traffic, so there is no coverage by Google Earth street view.

Ryan Krakowsky

The ventilation is under the floor…

Ian D. Lewis

Curiouser and curiouser. Does this door actually still get closed.