GUARDED PREMISES

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1934, Page 8

GUARDED PREMISES

PRECAUTIONS AT RESERVE BANK. CONSTRUCTION MYSTERIES. A new bank in process of establishing itself in its home is not the easiest place for members of the public seeking to satisfy a natural curiosity as to how the work is progressing. This truth has been brought home to many .who have shown more than a passing interest in the New Zealand Reserve Bank in the Dominion Farmers’ Institute Building. From about a month ago, when the work' of preparing the Reserve Bank’s offices .was begun, all unofficial visitors have been kept carefully at a distance, and according to the present signs, they will be still more completely disappointed, from now until the opening day. “Whatever sort .of interest the Wellington public may have in seeing, in their own city how a modem bank is made secure and burglar-proof,” remarked one of the officials. “If we could help it we wouldn’t even let them know in what part of the building are our vaults. It is better in both parties’ interests to give nothing away at all.” This policy the bank is following more closely as the day approaches when the last touches will have been given to the basement vaults on which until recently men were working night and day in strengthening them according to the latest methods; to the Dominion Farmers’ Institute conference hall on the ground floor, which has been transformed into the main public office, and to the third ' floor of the building, most of which contains executive offices. Actually the . staff lias been in the premises for some days. It is no secret that little has been spared in making the premises as formidably secure as those of any other bank in New Zealand. More formidable still from the point of view of those members of the public who know nothing of-the interior mysteries of construction, but who would like to know, is the presence of .officials guarding the outer doors, a surveillance that is kept day and night. Anyone getting out of the lift even on the third floor is politely asked his business before he goes any farther.