Los Angeles California, Hollywood Hills. The year was 2008 and celebrities were living it up just as they had been for decades. Between nightlife, award shows, and parties, stars were rarely at home. This made their less than humble abodes appealing to people coveting that glamorous lifestyle.
Obviously, celebs had top rate security preventing any thefts or break-ins. Right?
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The Chevrolet Corvette. One of America’s defining sports cars experienced a boom in sales in the early 1980s. It also became one of the most popular cars for thieves to steal. Insurance companies charged owners of the car up to 40 percent more just because of the theft rates.
Could a team of mechanics, engineers, and locksmiths put a stop to the likes of organized cars rings? Or would the bad guys stay one step ahead?
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Only three men involved in the Station nightclub fire are held legally responsible. But were there more to blame? Good comes out of darkness. Families and survivors band together to make sure the tragedy is never forgotten.
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In a matter of minutes, those still trapped inside the Station nightclub are on the verge of death. Can they still escape, or will they die trying?
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Note: The following is a republished excerpt from the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company’s Lockwood – The story of its past, the basis for its future. Published in 1953, and based almost entirely off of literature produced for Lockwood’s 1952 sales convention, it recounts the history of the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company from 1834 until 1952.
By 1953, the Lockwood Hardware Manufacturing Company, then a division of the Independent Lock Company with both being headquartered in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, fielded branch offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and Selma, Alabama along with five manufacturing plants in Fitchburg and one in Selma.
We have made no changes to this excerpt and what you see is exactly how it was printed in 1953, albeit in a different medium.
IN THIS CHAPTER is recorded the real rise and fall of the old Lock Company as a factor in the builders’ hardware field of the period from 1910 to 1931. Like the old Nashua Lock Company reported in Chapter One, Lockwood Manufacturing Company of South Norwalk, Conn., had its successes and, in later years, its disappointments and final sale to a stronger organization.
By 1910, Lockwood was well established in the builders’ hardware industry. The extensive line, then being marketed, can be well visualized when we find, in the year 1814, a new catalog being published having over 700 pages. While it is probably true, stock hardware sales was the predominating part of the business, it is also true, Lockwood had become very much of a factor in the contract field. In those days, it was customary for manufacturers and distributors alike to maintain a fine sample room. When a large contract was to be let, the factory provided huge trunks of hardware samples to be displayed.
Unfortunately, many of the early records of contract jobs were not preserved, or if so, they were not transferred to the Independent Lock Company. From what meager information we do have, however, we know that Lockwood hardware was supplied on some of the outstanding buildings in the country during this period, many of which are still standing. Some of them were:
THE AUDITORIUM, Los Angeles, California
U.S. POST OFFICE & COURT HOUSE, Los Angeles, California
HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING, Sacramento, California
ST. FRANCIS HOTEL, San Francisco, California
U.S. TREASURY BUILDING, San Francisco, California
THE PENINSULA HOTEL, San Mateo, California
THE HAMILTON HOTEL, Washington D.C.
MASONIC TEMPLE, Jacksonville, Florida
ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, Atlanta, Georgia
ROCHAMBEAU APARTMENTS, Baltimore, Maryland
THE SOUTHERN HOTEL, Baltimore, Maryland
HORTICULTURAL HALL, Boston, Massachusetts
TECHNOLOGY CHAMBERS, Boston, Massachusetts
THE AUDITORIUM, St. Paul, Minnesota
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, Kansas City, Missouri
VICTOR BUILDING, Kansas City, Missouri
STATE SAVINGS BANK BUILDING, Butte, Montana
THE STATE CAPITOL, Albany, New York
ST. GEORGE HOTEL, Brooklyn, New York
71st REGIMENT ARMORY, New York, New York
THE WORLD’S TOWER BUILDING, New York, New York
HOTEL SYRACUSE, Syracuse, New York
U.S. POST OFFICE BUILDING, Dayton, Ohio
STOCK EXCHANGE, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Y.M.C.A., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
PUBLIC LIBRARY, Salt Lake City, Utah
RANDOLPH – MACON WOMEN’S COLLEGE, Lynchburg, Virginia Continue reading
A small nightclub built in the late 1940s transforms over the years into a popular, local venue for live music and good evenings with friends until one fateful night it burns to the ground and claims one-hundred lives.
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With over four hundred people dead and dying at the Cocoanut Grove club, someone had to be to blamed. While investigators look for a cause, others work to make sure that the tropical paradise in Boston didn’t burn in vane. Continue reading
Tony is a kid who works at The Grove. Stanley works there too. Jimmy and Clifford are both in the armed forces and in the paradise at 17 Piedmont Street before heading out to war. All four would be forever effected by the inferno that awaited them that night. Continue reading
November, 1942. America is at war. Mobsters still have control and influence on city inspectors, allowing them to skate past regulations and requirements. Guys getting ready to ship out to the battlefield want to take their gals on one last date. The Cocoanut Grove promises to be the place for a night they’ll never forget. It lives up to its hype as a south seas paradise, but for all the wrong reasons. Continue reading
Every minute of every day in America there are emergencies. Multiple times a day people have to get to safety in a hurry and locked doors could mean a death sentence to them. Every state in the country, and most every city and county have laws requiring emergency exit devices on doors meant for people to get out and away from harm.
In 1911, however, there were few laws, if any, requiring this type of hardware. One hundred-forty-six people died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, most because they couldn’t get out. Just months prior to that disaster, the owners had been strongly advised to install exit devices on the doors to the production floors, but they never did.
That disaster, and the Von Duprin exit device paved the way to what is now so common in North America, most people don’t even know what its called.
