Thursday Doors – July 16, 2015

A number of years ago the company my wife works for decided that rather than continue renting their office space, it would make more sense in the long term for them to buy their own building.

The place they settled on was an old bank in a great location in the north-central part of the city and the designers they worked with did an impressive job of updating that older building and giving it a modern look.

They started by gutting and reconfiguring the main floor and the two floors above it and  ended up with more than enough office space to suit their needs.

When they got around to looking at the basement and began working on plans to turn it into useful work space, they realized that if they used the same gut-and-start-over approach, it was going to get very expensive, very quickly.

You see the basement was where this bank had its vault, complete with 30″ thick steel re-enforced concrete walls and one very imposing safe door.

Solution? Leave it as-is and with a little renovation on the inside use that space as the main meeting/boardroom, complete with the safe door intact.

Because of certain building code regulations they did end up having to cut one hole through the wall to make a door at the opposite end of the room. But even so, today this space leaves a lasting impression on every visitor that sees it.

I know it certainly did on me and fortunately they allowed me to go in after hours to take a few pics:

Here are a few close-ups that I took.

One of the locking pins:

In doing a little research I found that the Mosler Safe Co. was in operation from 1874 to 2001 and that their safes and vaults were reknowned for their strength and precision. In fact several of their vaults installed in Hiroshima Japan became famous for withstanding the dropping of the atomic bomb in WWII.

Now that’s a door hinge!

Feel free to join in on the fun by creating and sharing your own Thursday Doors post anytime between Thursday and Saturday morning for entry into that week’s selection.

Click on this blue button to post your links here:

If you share your posts on Twitter and Instagram don’t forget to use the #ThursdayDoors hashtag.

And please do take a few minutes to visit the Thursday Door posts shared by others.

Thanks for looking 🙂