
What's Inside This House On Wade Avenue? - sethbannon
http://wunc.org/post/video-whats-inside-house-wade-avenue
======
andr
In the earliest days of the London Underground, trains used steam engines,
which would collect steam and release it only at specified openings above
tunnels, so as to not suffocate everyone. In posh areas, fake housefronts like
this one:
[http://www.urban75.org/london/leinster.html](http://www.urban75.org/london/leinster.html)
were built with a hole behind them, and trains would release steam as they
passed under the hole.

More such cases in Brooklyn and Paris:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388179/When-
house-h...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388179/When-house-home-
The-fake-townhouses-just-hidden-portals-underground-world.html)

~~~
andr
Also, a military bunker in Moscow, masked as a house:
[http://englishrussia.com/2011/11/18/declassified-bunker-
of-t...](http://englishrussia.com/2011/11/18/declassified-bunker-of-the-ussr/)

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mindcrime
Damn, I've driven by there hundreds of times and had no clue anything was
unusual about that house. Never even noticed that there was no driveway.

When I first started reading this article, I had a feeling it was going to be
something to do with AT&T, possibly related to The Big Hole[1][[2].

Nothing quite so exciting though... Still, pretty neat.

[1]: [http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/big-hole-deep-
secret/Conten...](http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/big-hole-deep-
secret/Content?oid=1182760)

[2]:
[http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread188702/pg1](http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread188702/pg1)

~~~
gjmulhol
I have, too, and for some reason always assumed it was either some sort of
abandoned funeral home or a sort of religious organization artifice, a meeting
or banquet hall or something. It was always just a bit to clean, dark, and
empty to be a regular house.

~~~
eitally
Me, too. I kinda assumed it had been annexed by the church next door. One of
the churches in "downtown" Cary had done something similar (bought a number of
the surrounding homes for extra meeting/education/banquet space).

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mrjatx
Ha, pretty neat. I used to do work on cellular towers and you'd be really
surprised at how they manage to hide towers. I'm talking fake trees, church
steeples, etc. When you do tower surveys you're given GPS coordinates and
every so often I'd wind up having to comb an area up and down to figure out
where the tower was.

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pstack
This is entirely common, all over the world. Maintenance, accesses, and vents
to the New York subway system are hidden behind non-existent town and row-
houses and you can discover them if you pan around Google Maps for awhile.

[http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/01/29/the-fake-
townhouses...](http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/01/29/the-fake-townhouses-
hiding-mystery-underground-portals/)

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EvanAnderson
There are telco central offices disguised as houses, too. This one, in
Anaheim, CA, US is a good example (CLLI code ANHMCA17RS3):

[http://www.co-buildings.com/ca/714/](http://www.co-buildings.com/ca/714/)

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.8449,+-117.741&ie=UTF8&ll=...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.8449,+-117.741&ie=UTF8&ll=33.842493,-117.741637&spn=0.011424,0.01929&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=0&layer=c&cbll=33.842569,-117.741567&panoid=vQ-5BsS7PnbrdxkgcSX4sw&cbp=12,312.91,,0,-1.94)

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mnemonicsloth
_> Why Keep It Hidden?_

Because yuppies. It's all of two blocks from the biggest Whole Foods Market in
the Triangle.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Having spent some time there this seems
like an eminently reasonable answer.

~~~
rosser
_I 'm not sure why you were downvoted._

Because smugness?

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IbJacked
There’s a “house” a couple of miles from mine which is actually a power sub-
station. It's located in a heavily wooded, up-scale neighborhood, and would
have looked really out of place if it wasn't concealed.

But, the fake house still looks a little strange, as it doesn't have quite the
level of finishing of a real home.

~~~
pstack
Which is kind of bizarre, because how much extra effort would it have taken
them to pave a walkway to the door and have some lights on a randomized timer
during the night, to give the impression that someone uses the home? Although,
I guess that would be creepy if you lived in the neighborhood and never saw
the people, too.

~~~
DonGateley
I wonder what the threshold of detail is to remain effectively invisible or
beyond notice. That's all that's needed. I'm sure that's been deeply studied
by the military.

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dm2
How much more expensive would it have been to build this underground (with an
access door somewhere) and make the above area a park or open land?

Are underground structures partially avoided because of the potential for them
to collapse if not properly maintained or if a large truck drives over them
for whatever reason?

I've always had the desire to build a basement that I can slowly expand
overtime and have a huge underground facility. I wonder if this is possible?
Didn't they do it at the White House and Vice President's house?

~~~
jmccree
The cost of underground construction varies significantly depending on local
geological, soil, and water table conditions. In some areas with deep well
drained soil underground construction is relatively cheap, as it's basically
just earth moving. In others you hit granite bedrock after a few feet and you
have to excavate the bed rock to go deeper. It's certainly possible to expand
out from a basement, and every so often the news shows footage of elaborate
underground tunnels for drug manufacturing etc beneath a normal house.

If you're interested in underground structures, you should check out limestone
mines converted to office space or storage like subtropolis. They mine the
limestone of a solid horizontal layer leaving pillars to support the "roof",
creating an entire underground building millions of sqft and acres in size.
Subtropolis is over one thousand acres.

~~~
Someone
For subtropolis, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubTropolis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubTropolis).
From there,
[http://www.huntmidwest.com/subtropolis/index.html](http://www.huntmidwest.com/subtropolis/index.html)
gives you the site of the business. I find their brochure gives a good idea
about what it looks like:
[http://huntmidwest.com/pdfs/subtropolis_brochure_2012.pdf](http://huntmidwest.com/pdfs/subtropolis_brochure_2012.pdf)

Impressive, but way more industrial than, for example, the centuries old
limestone caves in the Belgian-Dutch-German border area ([http://maastricht-
students.com/2012/07/millions-of-years-of-...](http://maastricht-
students.com/2012/07/millions-of-years-of-history-in-caves/),
[http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g188575-d318667...](http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g188575-d318667-Reviews-
St_Pietersberg_Caves-Maastricht_Limburg_Province.html))

------
asmithmd1
Here is an odd "house" I noticed years ago in Falls Church, VA. Being right
outside Washington and one town over from the CIA headquarters I thought it
must have something to do with the them:

[https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=320+N+West+St&data=!1...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=320+N+West+St&data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-77.18168!3d38.891952!2m2!1f147.18!2f81.73!4f75!2m9!1e1!2m4!1sgfQH0jSQ6c-fJTlDJs9MXw!2e0!9m1!6sNorth+West+Street!5m2!1sgfQH0jSQ6c-fJTlDJs9MXw!2e0!4m15!2m14!1m13!1s0x89b7b4db2115a83f%3A0x387b2552761cc7a5!3m8!1m3!1d3!2d-77.179864!3d38.892837!3m2!1i1440!2i802!4f90!4m2!3d38.892595!4d-77.179891&fid=5)

~~~
eitally
My wife grew up practically across the street from that house and the way it
was discussed in the neighborhood was that it is/was a CIA safe house. A
utility station seems much more plausible.

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ivanbrussik
We had this in the town I grew up in, only it was a house with the "mechanical
room" for our water tower. People broke in all the time.

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tux
Kind of reminds you of house in "Resident Evil". O_o

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cma
this is sort of Cyberpunk inverted

