Safe Locksmith in Holmesburg, Philadelphia

An old neighborhood with old safes

Holmesburg grew up along Frankford Avenue long before the rest of the Northeast filled in. The Frankford Avenue bridge over Pennypack Creek here dates to the 1690s, and Pennypack Park runs along the neighborhood's edge. The houses are a mix of rowhomes, twins and older single homes.

Old houses mean old safes. A typical case is a dial safe in a basement that belonged to a parent or grandparent, or a safe that was already in the house when the current owner bought it. Nobody wrote the combination down, or the paper with the numbers went missing years ago.

Safe work in Holmesburg

• Inherited and antique safes, including old Philadelphia-made safes
• Lost combinations on dial and electronic locks
• Lost safe keys on key-locked safes and cash boxes
• Drilling and repair when a safe can't be opened any other way, so it can be used again
• Combination changes once the safe is open, so the new owner is the only one with the code

Philadelphia made a lot of safes

The safe at the top of this page is a J. Baum safe lettered for Chas. G. Stahl and Keystone Safe and Lock Co. of Philadelphia. Mike has also worked on safes from York Safe & Lock and Herring-Hall-Marvin. If the safe in your Holmesburg basement has a maker's name on it, that name is a useful clue to the lock inside and how the door is built. The safe brands page has more on the makers that turn up around here.

Why call Mike

Old safes need a specialist who knows old locks, not a car locksmith with a drill. Mike's background is in banks, where he worked on vault doors, time locks and safe deposit boxes, some of them a century old. He is a member of the Safe & Vault Technicians Association, and Holmesburg is right next door to where he works from.

House locks in Holmesburg

Older houses also have older locks. Mike rekeys and replaces house locks, works out keys for odd or old locks, and handles lockouts. See residential locksmith service.