York Town Square

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York Safe & Lock Archives

It’s pretty amazing the interest in this History Mystery post on the York Daily Record’s Facebook page. Perhaps it’s such a small part integral to the rest of the bulky product made in the thousands in York, Pa. Here’s the quiz: Thousands of these durable, indispensable parts were made in the 40 years before its ‪York, Pa.,‬ manufacturer closed about 1940. And many are in use and in fine working order today all over the world. What are we seeing here, and what company built this part for its signature product?

Fred Beihl is known to YorkTownSquare.com readers because of his expertise about York safes made by Forry Laucks’ York Safe & Lock for decades before World War II. He’ll be talking about those safes plus others in a presentation to the Stewartstown-Shrewsbury Coin Club from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Mason Dixon Public Library in Stewartstown. His presentation will include ‘the storage of valuables and the benefits of real safes vs. department store gun safes.’ He supplied this photo of a 2,000-pound Boston Safe, which must be the first photo on this blog of a safe that wasn’t a York-made safe. So Fred Beihl, also a coin dealer and auctioneer, knows safes of all stock – not just those sturdy vaults made by York Safe & Lock!

This was Floorola Products Inc., Maryland Avenue manufacturing plant in February 1942. A Office of War Information photographer visited York, Pa., to show how manufacturers were converting to defense work, just three months after Pearl Harbor.

‘We kids would go up there on that swinging bridge in the summertime and, in between working hours, we’d dive off of the bridge into the creek or we’d make it swing. You couldn’t swing it much, but a little bit. We had great times there at that swinging bridge.’ Late in life, Raymond Sechrist provided these boyhood recollections of this swinging bridge.This tightly bound span provided a short cut for workers walking from North York to York Safe & Lock and back.

Still on the artist Cliff Satterthwaite beat. He keeps sending in these interesting scenes documenting York County, Pa., circa 1960s and 1970s. This one shows a large piece of equipment passing through York County on its way to Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in the county’s southeastern corner. The artist noticed that utility poles had to be moved to accommodate this slow-moving monster, circa 1965.

Harley-Davidson motorcycles are on display around York County, Pa., where they’re assembled. But few get more looks from the public than this one. Interestingly, many York countians might never have seen this particular cycle. Can you locate it?