Massive Radiused Stepped Door- Czech style

Huw Eastwood

Here’s a real European beauty- from yet another elusive Czech manufacturer- Tresoria of Prague.

The door was originally installed for the Zivnostenska Banka and now houses the Czech National Bank’s ‘People & Money’ exhibition:
https://www.cnb.cz/en/public/cnb_exhibition/exhibition_prague/exp_obsah.html

Here’s an archive picture of the old factory

From a few other clues i found Along the way I think for anyone really into the research side there’s lots more to uncover on this one.

wylk

A great find, thanks for sharing!

It looks like there are no bolts on the bottom of the door (or they are well hidden). Certainly this would not be a problem with a door that big!

Sadly there is no glass to show off the boltwork. But it let them save a little money, no need to make it pretty.

The vault itself is two levels and quite spacious. Almost Goldfingerishly open. Too bad the web page’s panoramic views are so tiny.

At first glance it looks like there are six combination locks but one of them seems to be something else, some other control or a “retired” lock position.

Can anybody translate the lettering on the crane?

Huw Eastwood

Wylk i thought the first thing you’d notice was the pressure bar drive handle- it’s sited right down the bottom of the door!

It sure has some unusual details. Some are occasionally seen on other doors like the pressure bar stanchions devoid of external fixings, but the positioning of the pressure drive and the number of locks is pretty weird.

From the back or the side profile the door all seems classic 1930s or 40’s, but for some reason the front strikes me as a modern retro effort, the sort of thing a PR company would dream up for a display.

surprising how many other pics there are of this door, I just picked a few random ones from what looked the best.
Also found this one- could be from the time of the building/exhibition re-fit.

wylk

I found a decent (but small) image of the vault interior –

I did notice the pressure-bar handle but wanted to find a better image, which I did:

It’s also unusual in that we’re used to seeing a small boltwork handle and a much larger pressure-bar handle. This seems to be the other way around.

Huw Eastwood

safeman

MaxVaultage wrote
[ATTACH=CONFIG]16313[/ATTACH]

Can’t explain the clenching mechanism capstan handle being so low, but the apparent lack of downward shooting bolts might just be self - closing covers on the bolt pockets for practical reasons which is not unusual.

The number of locks on such a high security door could be that one or two pairs could be yolked and others used as an anti-resurrection device.

[unknown]