Posted by stew - Mon, Dec 1, 2008

Gazette & Courier - Monday, April 26, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items

The First National Bank has long felt the need of better safe accommodations, not that the officers apprehended any great danger from robbers, but the two safes in use were made long before the invention of modern burglar proof locks, and besides were small and inconvenient. It was finally decided to fill this want by the purchase of a new safe http://www.usgennet.org/usa/in/county/vanderburgh

ostcards/city_nat_bank_vault.jpg and the very best manufactured. A man from the establishment of Morris & Ireland of Boston, who have made safes for several of the leading banks of that city, was sent for, made some measurements in the vault, and has had constructed just such a safe as was needed for the place.

/ It is 4 1/2 ft. high, 3 1/2 wide, 28 inches deep, and weighs 5 tons. It arrived last Tues. and John Osterhout, who loaded it onto a truck at the depot, had a hard time pulling it up Clay hill. He got stuck once, and it was quite a long time before the 3 yokes of oxen and pair of horses succeeded in hauling the wheels out of the mire. The old vault door in the bank was not large enough to admit the safe, and George Day and Frank Park were employed to hew away the walls of mason work and make an aperture large enough to accommodate it and to put up the new vault doors purchased with it.

/ The latter are 6 ft. high and 30 inches wide, an outer and inner door, in a vestibule about 3 ft. deep. The doors, made of welded steel between plates of welded iron, are 2 1/2 inches thick, while the iron of the vestibule, made in a singular manner, is 1 1/2 inches thick. On the outer vault door is a Yale dial lock, and on the inner door a perfection lock. The safe, which is as burglarproof as it is possible to make them, is of welded iron and steel...and has a "strong box" inside...The cost of the safe was about $6000 and it will answer the requirements of the institution, it is hoped, for many years to come. The superintendent of Messrs. Morris & Ireland's manufactory was here to direct the setting up erection of the doors, etc. [Read more about Mr. Morris in the New York Times of Jan. 18, 1896].
 

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