Bonafide Security Solutions Opens 100-Year-Old Safe for Historical Society

By Jill Rick

Aug. 8, 2007

Hartland, Wis. -- Members of the Hartland Historical Society opened a 100-year-old safe last Thursday only to find the same thing discovered by Geraldo Rivera when he opened Al Capone’s vault back in 1986: a whole lot of nothing.

The safe was opened in preparation for its move later this week from the historic Hartland train depot to the Hartland Public Library, where it will be on permanent display in the local history section.

In about three weeks, the depot is scheduled to be sold to business partners James Marriott and Chris Miller, who plan to renovate the building and use it to house their architecture and construction companies.

Before the new owners could move in, however, there was a small matter of removing a large built-in freight scale and the 2,000-pound safe, the only occupants of the building that the historical society purchased in 1984.

According to Historical Society President Pan Weinhammer, the Bank of Hartland safe is believe to be a little more than 100 years old, dating from the late 1890s or early 1900s.

The magnesium steel safe is about the height and size of a two-drawer filing cabinet, and has three separate locking mechanisms, including a combination lock, a timer lock and a keyed lock.

Mike Egan, owner of Brookfield-based Bonafide Safe and Lock, said the Hartland Safe was one of the oldest his company ever worked on, and has a unique screw-type construction in which the door actually screws into the body of the safe.

On Thursday morning, after more than two hours of tinkering, locksmith Larry Mueller was about to give up and come up with an alternate strategy when he decided to give it one more try, and finally succeeded in opening the safe’s door.

Unfortunately, the big opening revealed nothing more than a shelf and an old piece of carpet.

Mueller removed all of the safe’s locking mechanism to ensure no one would be able to lock the safe while it’s on public display. The safe is scheduled to be moved to the library this Saturday by Hartland-based J&J Towing, which is donating its services for the move.

The freight scale will also be moved and stored temporarily in Weinhammer’s garage until the historical society decides what to do with it, she said.

Before the safe was opened, historical society members really had no idea what they would discover inside, although they were kind of hoping to find at least some gold bars, Weinhammer joked.

“We always laughed about the Geraldo Rivera thing and the big to-do about Al Capone’s safe,” Weinhammer said.

“We always knew in the back of our head that it could be empty, but you never know.”

Jill Rick is a correspondent for the Lake Country Reporter.

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