Thanks to all for the replies. I had suspected as much about the thick masonry and separate "vaults" Patrick Cunningham mentioned were planned but I wasn't sure. The NFPA 232 standard Christopher Ferry sent tied everything together. I have been able to account for our current Records Center as a repository for records going back to 1965. I had not been able to account for what it was used for prior to 1965. Several intriguing facts caught my attention: The room is a red brick masonry structure in a facility of concrete block and steel. The brick is double walled with a thickness of 14 inches including the mortar. The room was two rooms as constructed later merged to one as fire protection systems became more sophisticated.

The suspicion was the rooms had originally been planned or used for high grade flammables and combustibles in two separate rooms. I started wondering if the room had originally been constructed as it was for records storage while sitting at a McDonald's. I was looking across the street at an old "fireproof" records warehouse. It's a massive brick fortress and has been there since at least the 1940s if not earlier. When I saw the brick construction, I thought about the similarities to my own records center. I am now certain they built the records center using NFPA 232 as a guide. It had the vents at the top of the ceiling to prevent pressure buildup. Although given the double brick wall construction, the first wall would absorb a flashpoint blast while the second wall would maintain structural integrity and prevent a fire from spreading to the rest of the structure. There is also massive heavy steel vault door as the entrance.

There was no piping in the records center until the mid 1980s. What that meant there was no stream/radiator heat in the records center or the main lobby above it for 25 years. You can imagine what an unheated lobby in the Midwest was like in winter. I knew there had to be a reason they built a new, modern building in the 1950s but left the lobby and the space underneath it unheated. A lobby which was like a walk-freezer wasn't exactly welcoming to visitors. They couldn't run piping to the lobby because they didn't want to run it through the records center. I had figured they must have not put in heating in because they were storing highly flammable material not paper in the space. The standard would indicate otherwise. Steam pipes were added in the 1980s for radiator heat when fire systems had advanced enough to add them too such as Halon, FM, and so forth. Thanks to all for helping solve this mystery. The listserv members are incredible knowledge resource!

Rob Seibolt, CRM
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Manager-Records and Library Services
http://www.mriglobal.org


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