George, The trap door is right to the drum's age.It was so you could change the light bulb..The reason your drum show's no evidence pf a light bulb is when someone change the single lugs to the tube lugs on the drum they must have removed the two to 4 pieces of wire that holded the light bulb in the middle of the drum..The wire would have been under the single lug mounting screws....Mikey

One of the guys here turned one of those holes into a bar! (For booze!)

The tube lugs are a much later addition to that shell. It still has the holes from the original single-point mounts that held the single tension rods. Nice shell, too bad about that missing trap-door.

John

I don`t see a hinge point or a way to keep it shut !! Thing must vibrate alot too !!

no hinge at all. There were 2 blocks on the inside to keep it from falling in and one latch on the outside.

I put a bottle holder in the hole in my drum and converted it to a marching bass drum. The shell I got was also a Ludwig & Ludwig that was originally a single tension as well but the diameter was 25.5" and the hole on mine was 5"x5" and there were definitely holes for a hinged door. The 5x5 hole was easier to get a whole arm into the drum and my understanding was that the Ludwig & Ludwig Universal bass drum from that era had the trap door option to put your hardwar inside the drum. I saw the previous post about the light bulbs which also makes sense but my drum shell didn't have any extra wholes in it for the wire bulb holders. Nice shell regardless, good luck with it.

I can see three holes (triangle pattern) on the shell, that's where the old style ceramic light socket would have been.

Not much known about it but my friend has a shop of instruments, so i will ask him and reply as soon as possible.