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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Secretive Urbanism 13 Exclusive Speakeasies Shops With Hidden Entrances

By now, most of us are aware of the abandoned, once-forgotten subway stations and other underground wonders hidden beneath the streets of cities around the world. There are even entire cities beneath cities, like Seattle’s Underground. But what about the more obscure secret spaces right under our noses, that we may pass every day as we go along our routines, never knowing of their existence? You could be walking over a reproduction of the Holy Land, a beautiful Art Deco time capsule, a secret canal or a (literally) underground drag racing strip without having a single clue.

Secret Entrance to the White House

(images via Elliot Carter, Atlas Obscura)

Residents of Washington. D.C. probably walk or drive past this unremarkable alleyway all the time, never paying particular attention to the vehicles that go in or come out. But it’s actually a secret back door to the White House created in the 1940s, and the only reason we know that is through archival newspaper reports from the time, when it was just a matter of relatively yawn-worthy public interest. Perhaps the Secret Service would rather we didn’t know about it, especially since they have installed a bulletproof kiosk into the wall at the entrance for their own staff. The secret route winds around the block, into an IRS building and ultimately empties into a subterranean granite vault built during World War II. No doubt, it’s just one of several such routes, and though it’s low-key public information, you probably don’t want to march right up to the H Street entrance unless you’re looking to get some special Secret Service attention.

Lower-Lower Wacker Drive Under Chicago

(images via: Chicago Reader, digiwonk)

Some people call it the Bat Cave. Others, the Magic Road. You need a special pass card to gain entrance at either end, which makes it feel exclusive to those who zip through its cramped quarters full of concrete pillars. Lower Wacker Drive, which first opened in 1926, is unknown to many Chicagoans, while those who’ve been aware of it for decades roll their eyes at every person who thinks they ‘discovered’ the ‘secret’ passage designed for service vehicles and convention buses. Many skyscrapers along the route open directly to Lower Wacker Drive at basement level for deliveries and garbage trucks. But many a proudly in-the-know Chicago resident may still be unaware that there’s actually a Lower Lower Wacker Drive, built in 1975 for parking and storage. Most people only find out about it when their vehicle is towed to a notoriously hard to access impound lot located on this level. Others who live in the skyscrapers nearby may just wonder if they’re losing their minds when they hear the echoes of the illegal drag racing that goes on along this subterranean route every weekend.

Chattanooga’s Secret Underground City

(images via: picnooga)

There’s a whole other Chattanooga under the current Chattanooga, and nobody knows why. When you descend into the basement levels of many old businesses built in the 19th century, you’ll find windows and doors that lead nowhere, evidence of a lower level that disappeared underground when the city built up its roads between 1875 and 1905. Some people think they did this to avoid flooding from the Tennessee River, while others believe they may have thought it would help stop the spread of infectious diseases like cholera that ravaged residents at the time. It’s hard to really get a sense of the size and scale of this forgotten layer, because it’s almost entirely located on private property. Documentation of construction at the time is almost non-existent, so there’s no digging through archives to solve the mystery. Historians don’t even know where the city got the soil to fill it all in. Naturally, the owners of some of these structures have turned them into tourist attractions with various kinds of tours, and legends of ghosts have proliferated.

A Hidden Stream Beneath Indianapolis

When it’s mentioned in the novel Underground Airlines by Ben Winters, the subterranean river called Pogue’s Run under Indianapolis seems fictional like everything else in the story, which imagines a reality in which slavery in America was never officially abolished. But it’s actually real, running under the city for two and a half miles, a popular destination for urban explorers, who often traverse it by bike. It’s dark and dank, infested with terrifyingly robust rats and gigantic insects. It was directed under the city back when urban streams were essentially open sewers, and mostly hidden under structures like an old parking lot that was removed in the ‘90s, revealing a stretch of it to the public. It lies beneath the only stretch of the city that isn’t perfectly gridded and symmetrical, its own proportions screwing up the plan, and ends where the canal converges with the White River.

Catacombs of Washington

(images via: Mr.TinDC, Lawrence OP, David, Flickr CC)

Of all the many secrets that can be found beneath street level in our nation’s capital, this complex of dim passages might be one of the strangest and most unexpected. Guests who want to explore it enter through a dramatic ‘secret’ gated entrance located near the pulpit of a Franciscan monastery. What they’ll find inside is an almost Disney-like recreation of ‘The Holy Land,’ full of fake graves and reproduction grottoes cast from aggregate cement. The Catacombs of D.C. were created by the monks for North Americans who can’t afford to take a trip overseas. For all the fakery, there’s one grave that’s actually real, containing the skeleton of a seven- or eight-year-old child believed to be a martyr from the second century.

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Secret Spaces 12 Architectural Easter Eggs Hidden Under Our Noses

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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Hiding In Plain Sight 17 Secret Spaces From Safes To Pubs

For all of humankind’s history, we’ve been fascinated with hidden places. Before they were a fun architectural addition to new homes, hidden rooms and secret passages served a purpose. Most often, that purpose was to allow someone to hide or escape from some kind of danger. At other times, though, they have served a much more sinister purpose. Here are ten notable hidden chambers, secret rooms, and concealed passages from throughout history from priest holes to royal escape routes.

(image via: Lost Chord)

There are few cultures more mysterious than the Ancient Egyptians. Their enormous monuments defy our ideas about ancient technology. Countless explorers, marauders and archaeologists have struggled to uncover the secrets of the Giza Plateau pyramids for centuries. The designers of the monuments must have anticipated this, because their ingenious designs allowed many mummified remains to lie undisturbed since they were initially laid to rest. The pyramids often contain a decoy room filled with a few items to throw off tomb raiders, while the actual burial chamber is concealed. Only with the progression of our own technology have we been able to detect the rooms hidden deep beneath the main passages.

(image via: Craig Thornber)

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, practicing Catholic rites was punishable by up to life in prison or even death. Some brave Catholic priests roamed the country to visit loyal Catholics and perform services in their homes. The Queen’s men also roamed the country to catch Catholic priests in the act. As a result, many homes featured hidden chambers called priest holes. Priest holes were tiny, cleverly concealed spaces designed to hide a Catholic priest during raids and searches. Searches could last for days or even weeks, and often involved experienced builders who were trained to look for hiding places. Some priests were known to starve or suffocate in the cramped quarters while waiting out a search.

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10 Historic Secret Rooms And Hidden Passages

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.