THE STRONG Rooms.
For the same reason the strong room itself is prefer- ably constructed as an island with a passage round it too narrow for the free use of any implement for the penetration of its walls. The modern strong room is the result of a never ceasing battle of wits between the safe-maker and the burglar, but the present stage suggests that for the moment the burglar is beaten, as strong- room breaking seems to be a lost art. No longer do branch banks deposit their bullion in vaults in the bowels of the earth, but they prefer a single storey building, for ease of working, economy, and once again security, and this has made it difficult for the architect to avoid the new building being dwarfed by its neighbours. It is by no means easy to design a well-balanced small bank, as the essentials are not elastic : for instance, in a small frontage the door must be to one side : the windows large : and there is very little support left to carry the frieze and the parapet or roof essential to give height. I feel that though there are few real masterpieces of design among the two thousand odd new branch banks erected throughout England and Wales, flu: combined efforts of the bank towns. In the larger cities the new bank architect have added to the interest of the rovu-inenetl, is only part of the ground floor of a large modern block and loses, in consequence, any architectural-individuality as street architecture : which leads me to suggest that much excellent post-War craftsmanship in wood, plaster and metal is to be found within the walls of such buildings, and I think it is here that the bank architects have achieved something definite—a sense of dignity and repose that is typically English.
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