Secret passages: The sneakiest luxury

Secret passageways may be the least in-your-face status symbols ever devised. For the wealthy, they have long offered a guarantee of escape to safety or privacy—the ability to disappear, by slipping behind a door camouflaged as mirrors or cabinetry. Today’s best vanishing acts make use of motorized fake walls and fireplaces that swing open with the flip of a hidden switch. In literature and films, hidden passageways stand as metaphors for the unknowable depths of the human mind, or portals to other dimensions. For those who build them intentionally, the magic is a unique awareness of what’s real and what isn’t. Now, companies, bars and restaurants, and middle-class homeowners are increasingly seeing the appeal of covert spaces. Let’s venture through the wardrobe door. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Obsession] Secret passages October 31, 2019 The swiftest of departures --------------------------------------------------------------- Secret passageways may be the least in-your-face status symbols ever devised. For the wealthy, they have long offered a guarantee of escape to safety or privacy—the ability to disappear, by slipping behind a door camouflaged as mirrors or cabinetry. Today’s best vanishing acts make use of motorized fake walls and fireplaces that swing open with the flip of a hidden switch. In literature and films, hidden passageways stand as metaphors for the unknowable depths of the human mind, or portals to other dimensions. For those who build them intentionally, the magic is a unique awareness of what’s real and what isn’t. Now, companies, bars and restaurants, and middle-class homeowners are increasingly seeing the appeal of covert spaces. Let’s venture through the wardrobe door. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( by the digits [$1,008.66:]( The lowest price for a fake door that doubles as a bookshelf on Wayfair.com [$10,000:]( Base price for installing a secret room in your house, according to Creative Home Engineering, an Arizona firm that specializes in clandestine architecture 12: Highest number of concealed doors the same firm has built in a single house, according to lead designer Travis Humble [2,600 feet (792 meters):]( Length of the Passetto di Borgo, a tunnel at the Vatican, once used by popes to flee from foes [2,640 ft (805 m):]( Length of the longest known tunnel ever built under the US-Mexico border. It ran from a house in Tijuana to an ersatz wooden pallet business in San Diego. [5]( Steps to make a basic secret room in Minecraft [$17:]( Price of a cocktail at New York’s best-known, worst-kept secret speakeasy: Please Don’t Tell [0:]( Number of secret rooms in King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, quashing the theory that Queen Nefertiti’s tomb may be hidden behind wall paintings in the chamber. [$21,130:]( Price per night for Château de Farcheville, a 22-bedroom, 14th-century French castle with hidden doorways, passages, and rooms on Airbnb Creative Home Engineering explain it like i'm 5! Serving the secrets market --------------------------------------------------------------- In the 15 years that brothers Steve and Travis Humble have run [Creative Home Engineering]( in Phoenix, Arizona, they’ve planted steel vaulted doors behind gilded mirrors and [novelty phone booths]( staircases that [flip upwards like bottle caps]( and fake [“knock-knock” walls]( in hundreds of homes. The business, they say, is recession-proof and steadily growing. In 2019, the 17-person company expects to earn more than $2 million in revenue. Some of that profit will come from their custom work, which typically runs $10,000 to $15,000 per project. Travis Humble tells Quartz that no single demographic dominates the company’s clientele. They serve first-time homebuyers who want to give their kids a “secret” room to “discover,” as well as celebrities, athletes, and CEOs. These days, the brothers are getting more calls from bar and restaurant owners asking for a cleverly disguised speakeasy-style room for VIP patrons. All of their richest clients insist on remaining anonymous to the press, but some are so committed to keeping their safe rooms safe that even the brothers don’t know who they are. For these buyers, the company may have to ship the materials to a random warehouse address for a trusted contractor to pick up. “When we even get the drawings of the property, there will be a lot of information that’s redacted, like the property name, the property address,” says Humble. “So we don’t always know how our work is being used.” quotable “Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers.” ―[André Aciman,]( Me by Your Name]( this one weird trick A royal escape --------------------------------------------------------------- Among the decorations in Buckingham Palace’s main reception hall is an ornate [mirrored dresser that conceals a door]( leading to queen Elizabeth II’s private apartments. (Decoy furniture and hidden passages are pretty [standard in aristocratic homes]( across Europe.) The [not-so-secret passage]( allows the 93-year old monarch to gracefully appear and [(Irish) exit]( from private functions without having to snake through the palace’s 775 rooms. fun fact! At Ninja-dera, a 17th-century Buddhist temple and former secret armed outpost in Japan, modern visitors can tour hidden floors, 29 staircases, and a self-locking [“seppuku room,”]( a designated space for ritual suicide. It gave local lords a noble alternative to capture and decapitation if they were trapped by invaders. The way we 🏭 now The rise of the not-so-open office --------------------------------------------------------------- Imagine the thrill of holding your next budget marathon in a clandestine room. Google, Shutterstock, Macmillan Publishers, and Deutsch are among companies that recently divulged their secret spaces to the [New York Times](. Secret office nooks have been used as conference rooms, libraries, and party spaces, partly as a [revolt against the tyranny of open-plan office layouts](. David Ballard, director of the American Psychological Association’s office of applied psychology, explains that secret rooms can fulfill “a legitimate need in a workplace for particular types of environments that allow people to get away, out of the fray.” Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Secret passages? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Obsession email – to the email – brief history [16th century]( Houses in England feature a “priest hole” for Catholic clergy fleeing queen Elizabeth I’s henchmen. [1789]( Marie Antoinette and her entourage use a secret passage to flee a murderous mob at Versailles. [1892:]( Chicago’s infamous serial killer H.H. Holmes opens a 100-room hotel with trapdoors, windowless rooms, and hidden passages. The three-level building in the suburb of Englewood was where he tortured and killed at least 27 guests, earning it the moniker “Murder Castle.” [1942:]( Anne Frank and her family begin a two-year encampment in a hidden annex next to their house. The 500-sq-ft (47-sq-m) space could only be accessed via revolving bookshelves. [1950:]( The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, is published. The beloved children’s novel features a magical wardrobe that doubles as a portal to the land of Narnia. [1979:]( The first video game to feature a domestic setting is developed by Roberta Williams. Mystery House, set in a Victorian mansion, asks players to interact with quotidian objects, like knives or water pitchers, to reveal hidden spaces and passages. [2002:]( Panic Room, a thriller starring Jodie Foster, introduces luxury home “safe rooms” to mainstream moviegoers. [2012:]( The London Underground builds “Platform 9 ¾” at the Kings Cross Station to satisfy Harry Potter fans hunting for the secret portal that transports Harry to the Hogwarts Express. [2016]( Egyptologists discover a 100 ft (30 m) concealed “void” within the Great Pyramid of Giza. take me down this 🐰 hole! “Seven and a half, right?” --------------------------------------------------------------- Alice famously fell down a rabbit hole. In Being John Malkovich (1999), the [adventure begins when the job-seeking puppeteer Craig Schwartz travels]( upward to a liminal space, a surreal half-floor of a New York office tower. Which tech CEO is rumored to have a secret panic chute hidden by a trap door? Elon Musk, CEO of TeslaMark Zuckerberg, CEO of FacebookJeff Bezos, CEO of AmazonJack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter Correct. It leads from a conference room to an underground parking lot, according to unnamed sources. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. million-dollar question How secret are the secret tunnels under Washington, DC? --------------------------------------------------------------- Public knowledge about “secret” tunnels in Washington, DC, can be roughly divided into known knowns, like the mini [subway system for]( Capitol Building employees, and unknown unknowns, a.k.a. classified information. The White House to Treasury Building tunnel straddles both categories. This system begins in the Freedman’s Bank Building on Pennsylvania Ave, built in 1919 as the Treasury Annex. For reasons lost to history, [according to Atlas Obscura]( this satellite office was linked to the mothership Treasury Building by way of an underground passage. One theory is that the subterranean path was designed to protect employees carrying large amounts of cash. Years later, White House officials built an accessible tunnel between [the bunker]( the East Wing of the White House and the Treasury building, creating an escape route for president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair. This way he could be whisked off to the granite-encased basement of the Treasury, where bank vaults had been refurbished as bomb shelters. The then-secret construction of the ramp thus created an underground network that’s thought to still exist, but is not open to the public. poll How would you use a secret room? 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