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 were built with a hole behind them, and trains would release steam as they passed under the hole.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Because nobody but yuppies would prefer not to have a giant substation or maintenance station of various sorts slammed right into the middle of a neighborhood?
Also, for things that would otherwise simply not be covered at all, it keeps kids and vandals away and other potential liabilities.
As the article states, not because yuppies, because church and general environmental sensitivity on the part of the city management. They planned to disguise it forty years ago when it was planned, as I'm sure many communities have similarly done. Imho, this is similar to the practice of disguising urban cellular towers, a la http://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/examples-of-cell-phone-towe...
I just looked up the company Whole Foods Market that has those premises, they started in Austin in 1980, so presumably the City of Raleigh must have some of the best public officials in the world, given they can predict both yuppies and the future location of specific businesses.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you believe London's Evening Standard (not the most reliable of newspapers) in expensive areas of London it's common for people to buy 19th century mansions then build underground "mega-basements" [1,2,3,4] with features like pools, tennis courts and classic car museums.
[Edit: Added a once and future home owner's dream :) ]
Actually, the whole pump station does seem to be mostly underground. In the video, the public works employee shows where the front door would be from inside the unit, and it's pretty far up on the wall.
And yeah, I rent (and love renting), but the one thing I miss in doing so is not being able to just "dig holes". One day maybe I'll finally take the leap.
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:
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.
More such cases in Brooklyn and Paris: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388179/When-house-h...