The Trinity Building
The Neo-Gothic Trinity Building at 111 Broadway, next door to Trinity Church, was constructed around its bank vault in 1907! Today there is a bar and restaurant in that bank vault!
The 70-ton vault was commissioned in 1904 by the New York Realty Bank and constructed upstate in Hudson, NY before being placed on a barge and sailed down the Hudson River. Once it reached Lower Manhattan the vault was loaded on to railroad tracks, which were constructed just to get the vault up the hill from the bank of the river to the Broadway location. The vault still sits on these tracks to this date!
Designed by Francis H. Kimball, the Trinity and US Realty Building was constructed around the bank and rose to a height of 308-feet when it was completed in 1907. Adjacent to Richard Upjohn's 1846 Trinity Church and inspired by its neo-gothic architecture, the skyscraper is actually two separate 21-story slab buildings that rise straight from the street with no setbacks - separated by Thames Street and only linked by a steel footbridge.
Trinity Place with bank vault. trinityplacerestaurant.com
In 2006 the bank vault was restored to repurposed as Trinity Place, a bar and restaurant inside the former vault, giving the public an opportunity to see the historic site first hand. Trinity Place still houses both restored vault doors, one leading into the bar and the other into the restaurant, which was historically used as a secret meeting room for the board of directors and still has its original brass chandelier. The 5" thick steel walls that surrounded the vault are still visible.