The bodega on the corner, your laundromat, the pawn shop down the street or the innocuous law firm entrance you pass on your way to work could be harboring secrets behind unmarked doors or bookcases. America’s modern speakeasies exist more for the thrill of discovery than hiding illicit activities, but you have to admit, it’s pretty fun to walk into a hot dog joint, enter a phone booth, pick up the phone and dial a number to gain access to an exclusive bar. All of these businesses hide behind unassuming facades, only to be found by people who are ‘in the know.’

PDT (Please Don’t Tell), New York City

The novelty of an old-fashioned phone booth in a New York City hot dog joint is just the beginning of this strange and intriguing adventure known as ‘PDT’ (Please Don’t Tell.) If you enter the phone booth, pick up the phone and dial a certain number as directed by a small sign hung on the wall, you’ll be buzzed into a secret bar through the back wall of the booth. The bar has a classic laid-back speakeasy style complete with leather booths and taxidermy.

Community 54: Clothing Store Accessed Through a Photo Booth

There’s nothing particularly exclusive about the men’s streetwear store hidden in the back room of an arcade, but maybe the secrecy of its location makes it feel a little cooler than it really is. To access Community 54, you step through the fully-functional photo booth at the back of the arcade.

The Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company, Philadelphia

This is a real, actual speakeasy founded in the 1920s by legendary Philadelphia gangster Max ‘Boo Boo’ Hoff. Behind the front of the Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company was the country’s largest alcohol running ring during prohibition, more active than Al Capone’s operation. The end of prohibition clearly didn’t impact this speakeasy’s success, and you still enter through a nondescript mortgage company’s business front.

The Raines Law Room, New York City

Another seemingly buttoned-up professional facade, the entrance to Raines Law Room in New York City betrays absolutely nothing of the speakeasy behind its door. Though, one thing that might make a passerby suspicious is the fact that on busy nights, there might be a line out the door to what is ostensibly a law firm’s office. To experience the thrill of the ‘secret’ entrance, make reservations online Sunday through Tuesday, when there will be fewer people around.

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If you don’t have a Narnia-themed playroom hidden behind a wardrobe, a zombie-proof shelter accessible via your kitchen island or a gun safe under your 900-pound bulletproof couch, you just aren’t living. Some of these hidden rooms, secret passageways and cleverly concealed storage spaces are probably a bit excessive, but who doesn’t wish their house contained at least one of these cool features?

Real-Life Bat Cave: Hidden Garage in San Francisco

In San Francisco, where private parking spaces are just as rare and precious as affordable housing, one house in Haight-Ashbury took the situation into their own hands in a way that wouldn’t upset the city council. The base of the Haight-Ashbury house is indistinguishable from the rest of the historical Victorian facade, but at the push of a button, it reveals a hidden four-car garage.

Narnia-Themed Playroom Hidden Behind Wardrobe

When building a new house, the parents of one particularly lucky nine-year-old girl realized there was some extra space next to her bedroom and decided to have a bit of fun with it instead of just using it as storage or sealing it up. A tiny doorway concealed in the back of a wardrobe leads to the small Narnia-themed playroom complete with a mural that stretches up onto the ceiling.

Storm Shelter Under a Kitchen Island

In some parts of the country, having a storm shelter is just as essential as having a bedroom. A company called GFS Storm Shelters came up with a brilliant way to fit one into a home – by placing it under the kitchen, with the entrance hidden under an island. While its actual usage might be a bit mundane, it’s fun to imagine it functioning as a hideaway during the zombie apocalypse or just a fun secret. Hopefully there’s another exit that leads directly outdoors in case a real tornado takes the entire house down on top of it.

Porthole to a Playroom

A circular porthole that blends right into the faux wood floor of this modern home spits you out onto a slide that curls down into a colorful playroom.

Covert Concepts: Fireplace Door & Storage

Anyone searching your home for valuables probably wouldn’t think to check the usually-decorative panels on a wooden fireplace surround, making this a pretty safe place to keep items you’d like to conceal.

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Whether they hold a cache of high-tech, Batman-style weaponry or just a quiet retreat from the kids, secret rooms can make anyone feel as if they lead a life of mystery and intrigue. A company called Creative Home Engineering designs incredible secret passage systems that are virtually undetectable, hiding private spaces behind bookcases, wine racks and ordinary-looking walls.

While many secret rooms involve replacing a regular door with a bookcase on hinges, Creative Home Engineering’s carefully designed systems contain hidden cavities with steel structural support, so they won’t begin to sag or scrape over time due to weight and humidity.

They’re also designed to blend flawlessly with the surrounding room. The key to security for any secret room, of course, is proper concealment. You could also get an optional vault door with a super heavy-duty locking system that can be integrated into your home security system. Other options include armored doors and biometric access control devices, like fingerprint scanners.

While armor-plated panic rooms with hidden surveillance aren’t exactly accessible to most of us, financially speaking, it’s fun to dream about creating an network of secret passageways in our own homes.

Hidden rooms and secret passageways are the stuff of legend. Only found in ancient castles and fantasy books, nobody actually has a hidden door in their house, right? Very wrong. There is now an entire industry devoted to providing the slickest, most beautiful and subtle hideaways for adults who still have the dreams, and now the cash, to make fantasy a reality.

(Images via adamsfinefurniture)

Hidden rooms used to be more like small crawlspaces, used to store illicit goods, or smuggle human cargo (for good or ill purposes), but there are no longer such limitations. While a hidden room the size of a large office might be obvious to the astute observer, let’s be honest, most people entering a house are not keeping track of dimensions.

(Images via sybarites, curiousphotos, woodweb)

Just like in the movies, these hidden doors can be opened by knocking on the wall in a certain spot, or pulling a lever cleverly disguised as a book. The only limitation is in your pocketbook, and your spouse’s patience.

(Images via hometone)

Some hidden doors are acts of interesting design more than subtlety. This designer door can easily rotate a hundred different ways, and would not be purchased by someone hoping to make their house appear like a Sherlock Holmes setting.

(Images via essentialgearguide, curiousphotos, slashgear)

One of the most famous secret doorways is the hinged bookcase designed to blend in perfectly with the rest of the library, or under the stairs. These doors are even able to hold the weight of a real set of books, minus the one that can be used to open it, of course.

(Images via curiousphotos, apartmenttherapy)

The second most famous hidden door comes straight out of the realm of fantasy; who could forget the famous dresser and passageway into the land of Narnia? Some parents have decided to make this dream a reality for their children by creating innovative doorways into secret play rooms.

Hidden passages have a long history of appearing in fictional novels and films but an even richer past in reality dating back to Egyptian tombs passages for Christians to worship in hiding from Romans. Over the years hidden passages have been used to arrest kings and evacuate popes, hide shogun warriors, facilitate guerrilla fighters, enable drug smugglers and conceal serial killers. In recent times, however, many more modest individuals have created (or discovered) secret passages in ordinary everyday households and there are even companies dedicated to designing secret doors, rooms and passages in middle-class houses. In some cases the discovery of a secret room is a wonderful dream find but it can also be a twisted nightmare.

With so many secret rooms built into houses is it any wonder that some people are surprised to discover that their very own house has one they were entirely unaware of? One couple in an ordinary and unspectacular A-frame house found out they had their very own secret room after a year of living in the structure. The room itself: a space as large as their main bedroom and complete with somewhat creepy accessories including a sleeping bag, electrical outlet and even unopened beer cans.

While for one couple the discovering of a secret room was exciting and resulted in additional usable space for another family a similar find was the beginning of a nightmarish tragedy. In their secret room they found a mysterious note from a previous owner of the house who claimed that the structure was riddled with harmful mold that had made his children very sick. As it turned out, the note was right: an inspection revealed high levels of various dangerous molds and the new owners were able to sue and settled for having the house repurchased at the price they paid. And the previous owner? Apparently he was worried about someone with a vested interest in selling the house finding the note and therefore hid it.

Hidden rooms today usually serve one of two purposes: security or fun. Sometimes a hidden door is used to disguise a safe or a ‘panic room’ where residents can hide in an emergency. The room showed above, however, is one couples’ unusually creative gift to their very excited teenage daughter. This room works as an office and play-space and goes entirely unnoticed by clueless visitors (or even building inspectors). A remote control amazingly lifts an entire staircase out of the way revealing the hidden passage.

There are a number of design and construction companies that have grown up with the public’s recently renewed fascination with secret doors, rooms and passageways. Creative Home Engineering has a number of stock products and also creates custom hidden door and room designs. Their ready-made products include classics like the fireplace that opens when you twist a candlestick and a bookcase that opens when you tilt a book. The Hidden Doors company and others have dozens of simpler and less expensive stock items to choose from as well – from cabinets to pool racks and wine shelves masking hidden doors.

Want a secret room but aren’t sure you want to pay for one? Well, there are do-it-yourself options for creating your own disguised doors to hidden spaces though the process is somewhat complicated. There are of course a lot of things that have to be considered with a secret door such as hiding visible gaps with trim and giving the doors a comfortable swing capacity. Also, load issues need to be considered if you have, for example, a swinging bookshelf in mind. Remarkably, though, this can all potentially be accomplished for just a few hundred dollars – a relatively small price to pay for such a clever interior design feature.