York Round Door

[Doug MacQueen]

Yet another bank to become a restaurant here in Cleveland. This is a typical York door in a not so typical 25" size. My first challenge is to make the tool for dropping and raising the floor, which is missing. The owner wants to get the door cleaned up and semi-operational. At the opposite end of the vault room, which is quite large, is another door but that one is rectangular. Many years ago I had de-actictivated that door so it could not be locked. Here in these pictures I have dropped the floor to see how far the door would swing. Not very far, at least by myself. I will post some more pics as I work on this. Doug

[wylk]

Pictures and progress reports are certainly welcome! Do you know of any patents for the drop-floor mechanism? I'm curious as to how they work.

Can you share the location (yet)? This looks a lot like a place I'm aware of that is already a restaurant/bistro (I've never been there).

[Doug MacQueen]

What I have found so far is there appears to be a sub floor counter balance. When the upper floor drops down, this sub floor moves upward. Near the four corners are round pockets to receive locking pins, maybe 1" dia. These are thrown by the large key tool. Basically a 40" long 3/4" dia. steel rod with a T-handle at top and a small blade about 24" up from the bottom end. This is dropped down through the keyhole until the blade enters the lock. A short turn CC withdraws the locking pins. Stepping onto the floor causes it to sink down about a foot. To raise it back up, downward pressure is applied on the T-handle while standing off of the drop floor. This is acting on the subfloor, pushing it down and the upper floor raises. Twist the key clockwise to latch the bolts. I love a good challenge but I wonder how long it would have taken me to figure out how to raise the floor back up, not having the key tool. Fortunately there is another bank down the street I knew of with virtually the same door and floor. This was originally the United Bank at the corner of W.25th and Lorain, diagonally across from the West Side Market. I think the restaurant which is on the first floor, has been there about a year, but failed to catch the name. They also have a large party room in this basement vault where this door is located. Apparently Fox did some TV show about this restaurant but I don't know anything about that.

[wylk]

Many years ago I had de-actictivated that door so it could not be locked.

Could you describe how you prefer to de-activate a door? I can imagine two basic approaches:

One, lock the door "locked" but open. Thus, it simply cannot be closed unless somebody determines the combination first. On the downside, if somebody tries too hard to close it, leverage could cause some damage.

Two, withdraw the bolts and disable/remove the linkage so that the bolts cannot be thrown with the normal handle. If the door has pressure bars, those too would need to be disabled.

I'd guess there are details and variations in both cases.

I like what the Canyon Chophouse in Fort Collins (Colorado) did: during the initial rebuild from bank to restaurant, they put in a new roof support that is in the way of the door. Plus they cut a large hole in the side of the vault so it is no longer a closed room.

[Doug MacQueen]

You have pretty much described the possibles here. If a door is going to remain open at all times, having the bolts extended is more dramatic. In this case, the owner wants the door bolts operational so the door could be pushed shut for photos and the possibility of its use in a new movie being filmed here in Cleveland. I found out the Fox TV thing was just a local channel show. Here are a few more pics.