You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories behind at least a few notable, beau

The Fake Buildings of New York: What Happens Inside Their Mysterious Walls

submited by

Style Pass

2024-10-28 18:30:06

You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories behind at least a few notable, beautiful, or downright strange buildings. Yet most longtime New Yorkers, famed for tuning out their surroundings to better strive for their goals of the day, tend not even to acknowledge the structures liable to catch the attention of out-of-towners. Take 58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights: “From the outside, it looks like your typical townhouse,” says urban explorer Cash Jordan in his video above — but then you notice its blacked-out windows, bunker-like metal cladding, and apparently un-openable door.

Though it was indeed a townhouse when first built in 1847, 58 Joralemon Street was hollowed out and converted into one subway-system vent back in 1907. But the buildings right on either side remain residences, one of which, as Jordan finds, sold not long ago for $6 million.

In a completely different, more isolated context stands the Strecker Memorial Laboratory on Roosevelt Island. Built in 1892 as a laboratory for City Hospital, it opened as “the first institution in the nation for pathological and bacteriological research,” an activity it makes sense to keep apart from a dense urban environment. Abandoned in the nineteen-fifties, it later became another subway facility, specifically a power conversion substation.