Baltimore Federal Reserve Bank Branch

wylk

Old US Federal Reserve banks (and branches) have large interesting vault doors and many of these buildings have been vacated and sold off as the Fed moves on to newer buildings.

One such old building is in Baltimore at 114 East Lexington Street with Mosler-built vaults, designed in 1926, construction ended in 1928, and it was expanded in 1956. A September 8, 2016 article in the Baltimore Sun “Beneath the old Federal Reserve Bank in Baltimore, today the Lenore” (http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2016/09/from-the-vault-exploring-the-old-federal-reserve-bank-in-baltimore) includes images of the neglected Hollar-designed, Mosler-built vaults.

I assume this area is off-limits to the public as well as residents. In the first image note the control stand on the left which I presume had a large hand wheel to raise/lower the door’s floor segments. Also note the missing time lock, several pinions are gone, and one of the combination locks is missing its cover. In the second image notice the typical Hollar etched castle nuts. In the third image (of a different door) the time lock is gone; I assume the wires were part of the alarm system.

Huw Eastwood

We’ve discussed before the challenges when manufacturing those rectangular doors with matching frames when they have tapered radiused corners.

But noticed on that door- step 1 is radiused, so is step 2, then step 3, the innermost one, has square corners, with frame square to match, and then the boltcase housing the boltwork is strangely radiused, so it’s all radiused curves with a set of square edges part of the way in…weird.

Love the bi-metal effect on the gears with the steel and bronze. Amazing how it looks quite a bland door at a glance but has some nice details up close.

wylk

Another of the Baltimore Sun’s pictures but it isn’t a very good one:

Notice the copper bands on the second and third step. Mosler seemed to do this to doors that had copper layers embedded to thwart torch attacks. This was also the era of Donsteel but none of the pictures show the doors tagged as such. Also notice that for this door, the floor segment has been lowered.

One more picture which conveys a sense of massive impregnability. The pressure bar hand wheel has the expected spokes but it looks like the boltwork is operated by a single handle. The floor segment is dropped. The rust is sad to see.