Show I A FORTRESS OF + ° GREAT RICHES f I How the Governments Millions Are Protected NO CHANCE TO STEAL ARMED MOB OF THOUSANDS COULD DO AOTHIXG Every Vfncloiv and Room Can Be Turned Into n Fort on Short NoticeThe Arsenal is Kept Strictly Up to Date Employees Are Watched Only Danger Conies From Inside NYW YORK Sept 20j Iany a fine cracksman has taken a surreptitious trip into the Wall street district and gazed with jealous but admiring eyes upon the white stone building of the subtreasury where hundreds upon hundreds of millions of good dollars are stored all the time What splendid dreams must have drifted through the mind of the gentleman gen-tleman cracksman as lie thought of all these things How nice it would be on a dark rainy night to wallow in ti this ocean of gold silver and banknotes bank-notes How greedily packages of hundred hun-dred and thousand dollar banknotes would be stuffed into capacious pockets pock-ets He would walk dn a poor man and walk out a millionaire Henceforth Hence-forth he would be one of the kings of Wall street A happy vision a golden myth And the gentleman cracksman knew it Behind those walls within a few yards of him he knew there was enough money to make a thousand men rich But he also knew that there was no power within him that could bring these riches within touching distance Like all other cracksmen skilled in his business he knew somethingabout the defenses of the subtreasury and with this knowledge he concluded that he might just as easily try to capture the rock of Gibraltar singlehanded It is a boast of the subtreasury people peo-ple that half a dozen of the finest cracksmen on earth could work undisturbed undis-turbed all night on the building with W the most improved burglar tools known to the craft and they would bE no nearer their goal in the morning morn-Ing than they were the evening before But the treasury officials do not depend I de-pend upon the architectural strength of the building for defending the riches it holds The subtreasury is really a great fortress It could hold at bay L mob of 20000 people and if they came near enough blow them into ntoms A tour of this building is an interesting inter-esting work and when it is over the Visitor realizes the utter hopelessness of any attempt to rob or mob HAn H-An Old Building Fifty years ago work on the building was commenced and not a stick of wood was put into the structure To set fire to Jt is an impossibility The architect was J Frazee and the buildIng build-Ing was the pride of < his life He used to go down town two or three times a week a few years ago and gaze at it with < admiration If anyone com plimenred the old man upon the work tJ his delight was beautiful to see It would make him talk too and hew he-w uld tell how each of the great CorinThIan Cor-inThIan columns were laboriously drawn down Broadway behind a dozen oxen and followed by half the population popu-lation of the city The walls ere of granite eight feet thick The floors are of marble and steel the Interior walls are of iron and stone the arches and ceiling are of solid masonry the windowcasings are ironsheathed the stairways are of iron and the roof is of granite so solid and delicately curved that a projectile pro-jectile rom one of the huge twelve inch guns in the modern battleship would strike It and < bound away in some other direction The building was erected when the implements of warfare were very crude compared with those of today yet it could withstand a modern assault with more success than perhaps any other building not excepting the treasury at Washington whose weakness has more than once been criticized An EngllAlr View of It Some years ago an English writer had this to say about the subtreasury building The officials of the sub treasury seem to have lively apprehensions appre-hensions thzic some day outcast New York may rise in its rage and misery on the remaining fourth of opulence and ease Their bastile of wealth is always ready 4o resist assault by a forlorn hope Its bulletproof doors ihand grenades and Gatling guns are regarded as matters of course Such precautions are common at every t storehouse of riches in the city Not > only can thY safe deposit cellars be flooded in the event of fire but every passage to them can be filled at a moments notice with scalding steam to repel a mob The water and steam were a pleasant pleas-ant fancy of the English writer They do not exist there at least in the way described No mob could get near enough to the treasury to make water and steam of any use These are the reasons The granite roof is studded with armored turrets strong enough to withstand a hailstorm of bullets and built like the turrets on the monitors mon-itors of the navy Portholes pierce the walls of the turrets Some are just large enough to hold the muzzle of a rifle and give the marksman space to draw a sight on the surrounding obJects L ob-Jects while others are large enough for the nose of the Catling and Maxim 4v rapidfire gun Up In the third story through1 numerous nu-merous walls and iron doors end up winding Iron stairways is the arsenal An old colored man who fought in then the-n < and < 6n land is the king of this room He is a shrewd Intelligent fellow fel-low and has picked up a wonderful I knowledge of firearms He follows aIr the new inventions carefully and if they are worthy induces the officials to introduce them into his arsenal In this way the defensive and offensive equipments are kept strictly up to date He spends most of his time cleaning and oiling the 400 45caliber repeating rifles the 100 45caliber revolvers re-volvers and the rapidfire guns and keeping the ammunition nicely greased He also inspects the hand grenades some of them threepounders and others fivepounders This old colored man is confident that the subtreasury could stand off a mob of 100000 men The work is a matter of perpetual excitement to him and he goes about ft as if he expected ex-pected a fearful attack within a quarter I quar-ter of an hour It is safe to say that If the emergency arises where the use of arms will be necessary those in the subtreasury will be found to be in fine working order Fifteen hundred hand grenades are scattered about various parts ofthe building and it would only take one of them to wreck a good sized structure Many aiiniatnre Fortresses Each one of the many narrow win dows can be used as a miniature fortress fort-ress They all have recesses three feet deep and are fitted with shutters of onequarterinch boiler iron The windows are about four feet square large enough to accommodate two marksmen who can sit in the recesses and do great execution with their rifles through the portholes Every other window is fitted with a bonnet attachment By detaching a pin the bonnet swings outward so that it ex tends several feet outside the silL Two men can sit inside and either shoot with rifles through the portholes or drop handgrenades through a hole in the botorom upon the belligerent individuals indi-viduals who may gather below In the roof above the porches on the Wall street and Pine street sides of the building are dozens of holes about eight inches in diameter They look harmless enough when you glance up at them from the stone steps below but each one of these holes Is the center cen-ter of a fearful arsenal Grouped about them are bbxes holding dozens of spearpointed grenades Should any riotous mob strive to ascend the granite steps leading to the entrance doors one grenade loaded with dts five pounds of bullets dropped through one of the holes would scatter the assailants assail-ants in little pieces towards all points of the compass The Interior Defenses Every precaution possible is taken to keep a mob at a distance from the building but should all these prove ineffectual and an entrance be gained the real struggle would take place inside in-side the building There are scores of small rooms each petitioned off from the other by walls of stone and steel In event of necessity each one of these rooms could be made a formidable fortress Long deep apertures so narrow that a fat man would find some difficulty in working his way through lead to the money vaults Should an army of burglars try to force their way in they could only pass through one at atime and they could be picked off so easily by a single marksman on the other side that the passageway would be choked up in no time There are four doors to each vault and all fastened by time locks Sixteen Six-teen immense steel holts hold each door and at would be a days job for a skilled burglar to cut through one of these bolts It would < be easier for a thief to cut his way through the eight feet of granite wall from the outside than to go to work on the doors In feet all the danger from robbing lies among those employed in the building and they are chosen with such extreme care and are so vigorous ly watched that there as little danger from that source The sums handled are so immense that of course the temptation is great but no robbery has yet occurred in the subtreasury although there have been many in the treasury at Washington All the employees em-ployees are taught to look upon money as so much merchandise like dry gocids groceries and provisions The buying capacity of the stuff probably never enters the head of the handler If it does and he gives any signs of it he is discharged without delay Whenever money 5s taken from the vaults two men go in together as a = r k I 1 cfr 4 rtiE2ALi I I SOME OF THE DEFENSES check upon each other and to guard against mistakes At night five men patrol the building and every hour each one of them sends an all right to a nearby point Should this all right be two minutes late a squad of police would be on the scene in no time It is difficult to Imagine how this system could be improved upon |