Your City is Full of Fake Buildings - Here’s Why

Where you live could be full of fake buildings. You might have walked the streets of your hometown countless times and never spotted them. But not everything around us is how it seems. There’s a secret underbelly hidden behind or beneath those familiar exteriors. Let’s find out why your city might be full of fake buildings.

58 Joralemon St. Facade

You’d think a city as crowded as the Big Apple wouldn’t have a lot of room for fake buildings. But that would be your first mistake. Joralemon Street looks like any other street in Brooklyn. Except it’s hiding one very dark secret. At first glance, house number 58 doesn’t stand out in any obvious way. It’s a little redder than its neighbors, but the longer you look, the more things seem a little weird.

The windows are fully blacked out so you can’t see in. There is a big metal hatch that blocks the basement, and the door, well, let’s just say you’d struggle opening this thing by yourself. But when the sun goes down things get really weird. Passers-by have claimed that in the dead of night, you can hear a mysterious humming noise coming from inside, and an ominous orange light glowing through the lip around the door.

Luckily, this isn’t the home of some crazy Spiderman villain trying to blow up New York. 58 Joralemon Street is a fake house. Originally built in 1847, it was acquired by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company in 1908 who stripped and gutted the interior to create a ventilation shaft for the subway. It also doubles up as an emergency exit from the eastern end of the Joralemon Street Tunnel. This house keeps fresh air pumping into the subway and gives crew and passengers a way to escape.

So, it’s perfectly innocent. The humming noise is probably passing trains, and the orange glow could easily be a safety light. Supposedly, inside it’s actually rather boring. Lots of industrial-looking structural ironwork and not a lot else. Furthermore, nobody outside of “the railway” is allowed in there.

The Trompe-l'Oeil Facades Of Paris

New York isn’t the only country to conceal subway vents in creative ways either. If you’ve never been to Paris, you’re missing out. The long boulevards and old buildings make it one of the most beautiful cities in the world. However, some keen-eyed citizens have noticed something peculiar about a few of those buildings.

If you look closely at the windows, someone’s quite literally painted them on the side of the house! This is 29 Rue Quincampoix, and it’s not a real building. When the Paris metro was being expanded in the late ‘70s, there were huge issues around ventilation. Apparently, it’s inhumane to trap French people in a tiny tube traveling at high speed without any fresh air. But the city didn’t want to deface their beautiful districts by dotting fat, ugly chimneys all over the place.

So, they integrated the ventilation shafts into the city’s existing architecture. False facades like the one at Rue Quincampoix can be seen all throughout the city. Unlike Rue Quincampoix though, not all of them rely on paint for their trickery. The windows at 145 Rue Lafayette for example are perfectly real, they just peer into an empty hollow building posing as a house.

NY's Windowless 33 Thomas Street

Just a short journey across the East River from Joralemon Street is yet another New York fakery, except this one is much less subtle. Located at 33 Thomas Street, the former AT&T Long Lines Building is an imposing 550-foot presence on the New York skyline. However, what separates 33 Thomas Street from any other tall New York building is its utter lack of windows. That’s suspicious.

The official story goes that this building is a telephone exchange or wire center for connecting long-range communications, and I’m not saying it doesn’t do that. But there are some pretty wild theories about what else goes on inside these dark walls. Documents leaked by renowned whistleblower, Edward Snowden, and interviews with former AT&T employees provide compelling evidence that 33 Thomas Street has served as a National Security Agency surveillance site, code-named TITANPOINTE.

Does that mean that it's a super-secret spy facility hidden in plain sight? The NSA and AT&T have a long history of working together. And a series of top-secret NSA memos suggest they’ve hijacked the phone wires from a secure location within the building. Here, they’ve tapped and illegally gathered intel on US citizens’ private communications for decades. So much for a simple little phone connection center.

Undoubtedly, this supposedly innocent telephone connection tower was a secret spying facility, at some point in time at least. But there are a few really out-there theories that are hard to get behind. Some people think there’s no telephone connection center at all, and that it’s a cover story for a secret spy base, housing agents who specialize in international espionage. Others think it’s a real-life Men in Black complex full of aliens. Whatever the truth is behind 33 Thomas Street, it sure isn’t entirely what it claims to be.

23-24 Leinster Gardens, London's Fake Houses

Along the leafy street of Leinster Gardens in London, this pair of five-story houses share the same balconies, columns and decorative features as every other house on the street, except for one key detail: 23 to 24 Leinster Gardens are only five-feet-thick. And that’s just the front.

During the 1860s the city was expanding the Metropolitan Railway and needed to dig a large trench to make the tunnel. Because the OG 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens were directly above the new track path, they met an untimely end. However, once the tunnel was finished, local residents complained that the gaping tunnel now in their place was an eyesore.

So, this concrete façade was built to blend in with the rest of the street! And it’s been there ever since. If you’re tall enough, you can actually peer over the wall around the back and see the trains passing along the District and Circle lines.

Two District line trains behind the 23-24 Leinster Gardens facade. by DC Brett

However, wise-crackers over the years have decided this fake house is a great opportunity for a little fun. Back in the 1930s, savvy fraudsters sold tickets to a charity ball at the address. Only when all the well to do attendees showed up, they discovered the venue didn’t even exist. More recently, the address has been used for hoax pizza deliveries.

Fake Lake

In Changsha, China, property Developers listed ads for an apartment complex with a beautiful man-made lake as a centerpiece. However, upon moving into these apartments, the residents were rather disappointed. It turns out the lake was a total lie made up by the developers to trick people! Instead, they’d added this blue plastic shape to the floor, which looks nothing like water even if you squint.

小区奇葩景观走红：塑胶刷蓝伪装湖 by 中国刑事记录

Google Created LA Neighborhoods That Never Existed

Some LA natives noticed Google feeding totally false information. When looking at a map, they spotted entire neighborhoods that simply didn’t exist. Suddenly, Silver Lake Heights and North Highland Park were showing up, which were totally foreign to people who’d lived their entire lives in the city. And just as quickly as they’d appeared, they vanished a few days later.

Before we go off the rails, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for this. Google uses data to decide what to label certain neighborhoods. But they’re pretty tight-lipped about the data. Who’s to say that the data wasn’t pulled from some scumbag realtor trying to make an area sound more exotic? But then again, to know that a company as big as Google has the power to change the name of where you live is somewhat scary. While they changed it back, how do we know they won’t do this again or bigger?

Sham Tower, Piltown

Back in the 19th century, the son of a man from Piltown, Ireland, was conscripted to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. But when news reached home that the son had disappeared and was assumed dead, his father was devastated. So much so, he began constructing a grand tower at the highest point in the village to commemorate his passing. Only, it didn’t exactly go to plan.

The man worked tirelessly through the grief day and night to build his elaborate tribute. However, after two stories were finished, guess who rocks up? His son! Turns out, he had disappeared, but he was fine! It’d just taken him a few weeks to make his way back to Piltown to see his father again. Still, the man was overcome with joy at the return of his son and abandoned the tower, half built. And it’s still standing! In recent years the top floor has been converted to a water storage tower, but that’s about it.

Boeing Wonderland

Boeing Wonderland isn’t actually a real town at all. It’s a prop town built by Hollywood Set Designer, John Stewart Detlie. But the town isn’t the most surprising thing. It’s what’s below it.

Back in the 1930s, aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, built a new facility to manufacture B-17 flying Fortress and 307 Stratoliners. Starting off at a humble 60,000 square feet, in the space of just five years it grew to a whopping 1.7 million square feet and was producing huge quantities of military aircraft.

However, in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks, where Japanese aircraft assaulted a major US naval base in Hawaii, the US were pulled into World War II, and feared this giant Boeing plant could be a major target. So, US Army Corps built plywood houses and an entire fake town infrastructure to camouflage the facility with the next nearby town. The trees were made of chicken wire coated in tar and dipped in feathers. Grass was sprayed different shades of green to look realistic. They really pulled out all the stops.

Sure, from the ground this wouldn’t convince anyone. But it didn’t need to. It needed to protect the 30,000 hardworking US Engineers building planes below the ground from potential aerial threat. And it worked perfectly. Not only did the plant survive the war, but it carried on producing planes until the 1980s.

By then though, most manufacturing had moved to more modern facilities. Come 2010, the Boeing plant fell into disrepair due to faulty pipes and earthquake damage and was demoed. However, a genius idea for a little fake town played a huge part in the outcome of the War.

Toronto's Camouflaged Substations

Nowadays, many of us take electricity for granted. But back in the early 1900s, electrical power was the big new thing for Toronto. City jurisdiction began rolling in the power on high-tension transmission lines from Niagara Falls ready to be converted into currents for the average consumer. But there was a problem.

You need a load of dangerous transformers, wires, and resistors to harness electricity, and no one wanted these in the city. As well as being ugly, if little Jimmy was playing nearby and ventured in to retrieve his hockey puck, let’s just say that’s not ending well. So, the city had to devise a plan, and it looked like this building in the image below.

Due to the ornate windows and rough-cut stone, this building has been nicknamed The Castle, but it’s actually a power station. There’s even a heavy set of oak doors that look a lot like a drawbridge! Little Jimmy stays safe, and everyone is happy.

But The Castle isn’t the only front for power. On the corner of Duncan Street and Nelson Street, Sub Station D might not stand out as much as The Castle, but that was the point. Back in the 1910s, this district was full of factories, so the building was designed to blend in perfectly with its surroundings.

The same goes for this house on 386 Eglinton Avenue East. This humble home in the image below looks like any other suburban house along the street, someone even mowed the lawn. Only, when you see it from the back, you'll see that someone’s hiding the juice in the caboose.

Sadly, this property and many others like it were destroyed, and the land listed for sale. That’s because as technology advanced, many of these transformer buildings became obsolete as larger stations were built underground. It’s a shame they weren’t kept as a little nod to the past.

Fake Facades In Russia To Impress Putin

The town of Suzdal in Russia has great historical significance, there are loads of buildings here dating way back to the 12th century. When Russian President, Vladimir Putin, was due to visit Suzdal in 2013, city officials realized that a lot of buildings looked like they hadn’t been touched since the 12th century.

So, some wisecracking politician had the killer idea to wrap all the ugly, dilapidated houses in giant banners. They looked awful. If the fake windows on the banners weren’t bad enough, one even has a cat on it. The funniest part is Putin never actually came, so this was all a pointless endeavor.

But it makes me wonder, how was such a beautiful historic city allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair? The answer is pretty simple. A lot of very wealthy people do live in Suzdal, but in big private mansions on the outskirts of the city. These inner-city homes however are mostly occupied by frail old people with little time or money to carry out repairs. On top of that, many of the buildings are historical monuments protected by the state.

So even if you wanted to spruce up the outside with a lick of paint you’ve got to go to the local authority, wait in line, collect your forms, return your forms, then do more forms, etc.; you get the picture. Understandably, most residents can’t be bothered.

Sham Castle, Claverton Down

During the 18th century, it became a trend for the landed gentry in rural Britain to build mock castles on their estates. While they look eye-catching and magnificent, they’re also completely for show. This impressive building is on the Claverton Down outside Bath, England, and it was designed around 1755.

Sham Castle 2023.04.06 [一分鐘航拍] #Bath #英國 #巴斯 #沙姆城堡 by Thomasの一分鐘航拍

Structures like these are called follies, and they’re architectural buildings with no real purpose other than to decorate the landscape. The castle at Claverton Down was designed purely to improve the view from someone’s townhouse in Bath. And it was only meant to be viewed from one direction, which is the frontside.

But these fancy rich folk loved them. There’s another folly over at Hagley Hall, Worcestershire, another down the road at Clent Grove, another at Castle Hill in Devon, and two at Croome Court. And that’s just to name a few.

5 Thurloe Square, Thin House

A short trip around the corner from Leinster Gardens is another building that was heavily impacted by the creation of the tube line. Back in the 1860s, 23 of the houses on Thurloe Square were designated to be handed over to the Metropolitan District Railway, but in the end, only 5 were demolished.

So, when the new line was put in it left an awkward and out-of-place triangular patch of land. By the late 1800s, this area had become quite a hub for Victorian artists. But with the railway line so close and only limited space available, the plot remained vacant for many years. Until ingenious Builder, William Douglas, had just the idea for what to put there, and set about creating this in the image below.

From the outside you’d say there’s no way this is a real building. Its narrowest point is only 6 feet wide. But inside, Douglas managed to squeeze seven artist studios. In recent years, these fake-looking studios have been turned into actual apartments! And back in 2021, a tiny 580-square-foot apartment sold for a mind-boggling $1 million. That’s a little steep for a box with a stove but it goes to show, not everything that looks fake is quite as untrue as it seems.

I hope you were amazed at these fake buildings! Thanks for reading.