Lower the "hammer" on a striker fired pistol? Pull the trigger. After looking to see that it is empty.
What you are describing is dry firing, not "lowering the hammer".
We're going to disagree on terms, here. When I say "lower the hammer" I mean, without FIRING the gun. Decock, if you prefer. Ok, if you got a button (or a lever) that does it, cool. If you don't then its something you can't do without a hammer.
I'm pretty confident that the grip safety was included in the M1911 design because, prior to the Series 80, it had no firing pin block;
You may be pretty confident, but you'd be wrong.
The grip safety was an original part of Browning's design. In fact, it was the ONLY safety on the prototype submitted for original testing.
Browning considered that the grip safety, alone was enough. There are earlier Browning designs that only have a grip safety. Browning was a genius at gun design, but he wasn't a soldier, or a gun fighter. Features that users might consider important didn't always occur to him, until pointed out.
The Army tested his pistol, and the Cavalry (the most influential branch at the time) wanted a different safety. A positive, manual safety. (the concern was the risk re-holstering a cocked pistol with only a grip safety)
Browning then added the "safety lock" commonly called the thumb safety, to his next prototype, and that design was accepted, and became the 1911. It had nothing at all to do with the design not having a firing pin block.
if I'm right about that, the grip safety on 1911-style pistols became vestigial on Series 80 pistols.
I don't see how it can be considered vestigial on series 80 pistols, the grip safety on series 80 pistols does exactly the same job, exactly the same way as it has since the original design. And that job is not, and never was to keep the firing pin from moving without the trigger being pulled. That job is done by other parts. The job of the grip safety is to keep the pistol from firing if the trigger was pulled without the hand in the proper firing grip.
Remember, it's a mistake to apply current standards of thinking to things designed over 100 years ago. People had a different idea of acceptable risk in those days than we do today. The 1911 design, with its inertia firing pin, grip safety, and a manual safety was one of, if not the most "drop safe" guns of its era.
And the thinking of that era did not require a pistol to be 100% drop safe unlike today. 98 or 99% was considered really safe, not just good enough.