One King West, Toronto

[VaultDoors]

Great observations, thank you! I updated the vault plan:

[VaultDoors]

The One King West vault door appears to be missing its glass panel. If you look at the inside of the outer most ring (towards the bottom) you can see what appears to be a track to hold the glass in place. Vault doors of similar design (Cleveland Fed and Equitable Bldg/Capital Grille) have glass panels installed to enclose the locking bolts. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any pics of the vault door with the glass installed.

[wylk]

The One King West vault door appears to be missing its glass panel...

True, I hadn't noticed that. I checked all of my images and could not find one with glass. It would be nice to see it replaced but a piece that large might be a bit pricey to buy and have cut. Plus it would make the door much more difficult to photograph.

The Broker restaurant in Denver used to have its glass panel but it disappeared too, comparing older and newer images. Being in a bar I'd have to guess somebody accidentally broke it, and the staff thinks it looks better without the glass.

[VaultDoors]

True, I hadn't noticed that. I checked all of my images and could not find one with glass. It would be nice to see it replaced but a piece that large might be a bit pricey to buy and have cut. Plus it would make the door much more difficult to photograph.

The Broker restaurant in Denver used to have its glass panel but it disappeared too, comparing older and newer images. Being in a bar I'd have to guess somebody accidentally broke it, and the staff thinks it looks better without the glass.

Here is a pic of the Broker Restaurant vault architrave. The wall clock's edge is visible in the upper left corner. There is a close up available here if you keep clicking on the picture.

[Doug MacQueen]

No automatic bolt motors on these doors. Doug

[VaultDoors]

No automatic bolt motors on these doors. Doug

Do you know what is contained within the ball housing behind the time lock?

[wylk]

Cool images. If you have a moment to explain, how did you find these? I'm open to improving my internet searching skills!

Are there any antique-locks members in Toronto? The door at One King West is publicly viewable (unless they have a wedding reception in progress or some other function) and we keep coming up with questions!

[VaultDoors]

Cool images. If you have a moment to explain, how did you find these? I'm open to improving my internet searching skills!

Are there any antique-locks members in Toronto? The door at One King West is publicly viewable (unless they have a wedding reception in progress or some other function) and we keep coming up with questions!

I primarily use Google Image search and Flickr with various spellings to find pics. For One King West I used "One King West Vault", "1KW Vault", "OKW Vault". I search former building names rather than just the original and current building names, "Dominion Bank Vault", "TD Bank Vault". I search for the city where the vault is located, "Toronto Vault".

Once I get a hit on Flickr I search the entire album not just the pic that matched my search criteria. Often times, only one pic will be labeled correctly and the others are not which excludes them from my search.

I also use Google Web search and Google Books for text searching. Once I get a hit on Google Books I download the .pdf (if available) then apply OCR (Optical Character Recognition via Adobe Acrobat) which makes searching much easier. This allows me to find pics from the article's text rather than picture's metadata.

I use Picasa and Bing for picture searching as well.

I capture images from YouTube or pics on my screen (via PrtScn key) as needed then paste the image into a picture app. I also right-click pictures and select "Save picture as..." to download them. If a picture doesn't have the "Save picture as..." option then I use "File/Save as..." and select the "Webpage, complete" file type, this downloads the entire webpage (a folder and a .html file) and from there you can access images in the folder.

There's a RealDownloader Plug-in on Firefox that allows you to download YouTube videos that can then be played and edited via RealPlayer.

I occasionally use the OCLC/WorldCat search engine (via the Phoenix Public Library) where you can search for and order books via their Inter Library Loan program if needed.

Hope this helps!

[VaultDoors]

Cool images. If you have a moment to explain, how did you find these? I'm open to improving my internet searching skills!

Are there any antique-locks members in Toronto? The door at One King West is publicly viewable (unless they have a wedding reception in progress or some other function) and we keep coming up with questions!

The last time I checked there were a couple members in Toronto who I may ask to conduct a photo expedition for a few elements I still am unable to see from the pics. I may be in Toronto for business this year and if so I will take pics and dimensions.

I am planning to build a scale model of the One King West door from Styrofoam and wood, no larger than 8" diameter. I believe I have all the materials required to really hurt myself :-)



Here is a 9' round vault door model and here's how it was built.

[wylk]

Here's a wacky idea on the two hollow-end bolts and corresponding contacts. Is it possible they filled the depression in the bolts with mercury and used the two prongs to electrically detect bolt extension? They might have used two for redundancy. And years later this could have been replaced with a more reliable mechanical switch at the top? Does anybody know if something like this was ever done?

Toxicity of mercury around 1914 might have been a minor concern.