Montour American. (Danville, Pa.) 1866-1920, 1909-01-14
DEADLY DEFENSE PLAN
Steam Blasts Protect New
York'S National City Bank.
COULD STOP AN INVASION.
Whole Building Can Be Flooded With
Superheated vapor In a Few Min
utes - System Installed as Great
Vaults Protection In New Home.


utes System Installed as Great
Vaults Protection In New Home.
Blasts of steam, superheated and
kept under such pressure as to flood
the entire building in few minutes,
will be the main scheme in a deadly
system of defense that the National
City bank of New York, the largest
financial institution in America, relies
upon to make its new home in Wall
street the most impregnable financial
fortress in the world and into which IT
recently moved.
Wall street for years has fortified
itself against possible invasion by a
mob or a concentrated attack from
hundreds of burglars, and all its strong
rooms and safes have been built of the
most thief proof material at hand, but
the National City bank is the first to
adopt steam as Il method of defense,
says the New York Herald. Around
the banks great safe, which is of the
usual burglar proof conStruction-tons
of armored steel, REINFORCED concrete,
iron rails and meSheS of sensitive
alarm wires-is a system of steam
pipes that, should all other means fail
to Illustrate robbers, would snuff out
the lives of scores of burglars should
they continue to work near the safe or
would stand OFF hundreds of men for
an indefinite length of time If 1t did
not suftocate them before they could
escape from the building.
The great safe, or strong room, which
weighs 300 tons, is twenty feet high,
twenty-four feet long and about f1f-
teen feet deep. 1t is built in two sto-
ries. the upper section rising from the
center of the main floor and the lower
section extending into the basement,
where 1t rests on wide marble legs like
some gloomy sarcophagus. These legs
are about five feet high and allow
from the basement at all times a full
view under the safe.
Looming up from the center of
great square of bronze . lied cages
and small rooms the safe. finished in
dull gray, looks like Il section of
warship in battle paint among fleet
of brass rallied and brass trimmed
yachts, and entering one of its doors
gives the impression of stepping into
a turret of one of the great battle
ships, a huge steel hinge much like a
miniature crane swinging the sixteen
ton doors instead of an ammunition
hoist. Highly polished steel crossbars
on the outside of the circular doors
make them look like the breeches of
thirteen inch guns.
The armament of the vault is about
foot and half thick, first half
inch plate Of steel, then half an inch
Of wire mesh made up of sensitive
wires that stretch off in a score of diff
ferent directions to alarm stations.
After the wire mesh there is a half
inch plate of steel, then eight inches
OF railroad iron and concrete and last
five inches of armor plate.
Running around the middle Of the
vault directly under the bank floor,
which is provided with n grating to
allow of perfect draft from under
meath, is the system Of steam pipes
which the bank officials depend upon
to do final execution should all other
protection fail. These pipes are four
inches in diameter, perforated with
wide valves az intervals of about
twelve inches. and are connected with
mains that lead to the boilers. Should
a burglar or any number Of them pen
citrate the first layer of steel and then
the wire mesh without giving an alarm
all the valves can be opened by sin
gle turn of Il wheel in any Of dozen
places throughout the building, send
ing out flood of steam that will com
pletely envelop the safe in less than
half q minute.
Should a sudden invasion from an
underground passage be made slmulta-
neously with the entry from the street
OF hundreds of men, all the valves
would be kept wide open until the
sitting, burning vapor filled the entire
basement and the banking chamber
clear to the top of its seventy-two foot
dome, killing all those unable to make
their escape.