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After the robbery, they changed the locks

Brinks lock changing

Leslie Jones photographed a worker changing a lock at the Brink's warehouse in the North End following the $2.7-million robbery on Jan. 17, 1950. It turned out that part of the gang's two years of preparation involved secretly replacing several locks at the warehouse beforehand to make their entry easier.

The warehouse still stands today, as a parking garage at 600 Commercial St.

Photo from the BPL's Leslie Jones collection. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

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Comments

This building was never a warehouse, despite what the 1950 newspaper may have said. It was built as a parking garage, the North Terminal Garage if I recall correctly, and remains a garage today.

It is unusual in that it has four parking levels but no internal ramps. It's built on the side of a hill, and each parking level has a separate entrance to the sloping streets outside.

In 1950 Brink's rented one of the parking levels to use as the base for their Boston operations. If you read one of the histories of the robbery, you'll note that Brink's had only been in the garage for a few months. When the robbers began planning the heist, Brink's was located somewhere else. They were almost ready to carry off the job when Brink's moved, and the crooks had to plan everything all over again.

Here's a Google StreetView photo of what may well be the same doorway:
http://goo.gl/maps/2HjBg

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