The Windowless Skyscraper Conspiracy

I've actually been in the 33 Thomas Street building in Manhattan in the summer of 2000. I used to work for Priceline and they had a data center there. Being in a building that big with no windows is creepy as hell.

Many years ago I did inspection of construction work in 33 Thomas, and 811 Tenth ave (another lesser known monolithic Telecom building with no windows on the west side of NYC), on a dozen or so floors. They're both floors and floors of server rooms and telecom equipment. A couple floors for multiple generator rooms, fuel tanks in the cellars, and other areas for various types of equipment, like batteries, HVAC systems, etc. The scariest thing about these buildings in my time within them was the just how few people are inside of them. I'd be walking around a floor for an hour or more, checking fire rated walls, piping, ducts, etc, and I'd be the only person on the floor. Rarely saw anyone coming through the lobbies aside from the security staff. Elevators were always empty. There were some times I'd be on a floor with 2 or 3 other people checking connections at servers or on computer terminals. But they're really like ghost buildings. Just the constant humming and hissing of equipment and air blowing through fans and ductwork.

You have to love the sheer audacity of a surveillance building being called “Fair View”.

I really liked Control's rendition of 33 Thomas. Exploring inside of "The Oldest House" felt endless. Each level was like entering a door from Monsters inc.

33 Thomas Street used to be called the Long Lines Building. I used to walk by it and see the staff hanging out in the sunlight during their lunch times. It was said that working in a building that had no windows made the staff go a little crazy. My friends and I used to call it the Ministry of Love, or the Ministry of Truth, from Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Looks like we weren't far off regarding some of its purposes.

In 1975 I was an Architecture student at Brooklyn Tech HS and my pencil drawings of 33 Thomas were used as the foundation for my senior project on modern architecture. Wow you have brought me back. It is also interesting how the "times" shape perception. Back then we did not think of spying, we thought of surviving the big one and seeing these types of buildings gave us strength, not fear. Enjoy you content!

These buildings built in the 1970 coincided with the introduction of the 4ESS, originally called the Number 4 Electronic Switching System. This was the first digital switch system the Bell System made. There are reasons for the windowless exterior. One of the big reasons is that a storm is not going to break a window and let water into sensitive electric equipment. Additionally, the magnetic tape machines used to record billing details used to use a reflective surface at the beginning and end of the tape, and sunlight coming into a switching building had caused problems with false detector reports. If there was anything the Bell System didn't want, it was losing billing data from the days that a long distance call could be $3 per minute. The large batteries were lead-acid batteries, and each cell was 1.5 volts. They could store lots of energy, and were interconnected with thick copper cables which fed a large copper bus bar. An installer where I worked dropped a screwdriver, and the power in those batteries vaporized the tip off the screwdriver. But, relevant to the building, those batteries were very heavy, and needed a lot of structure to support them. Not only were the batteries (filled with lead and acid) heavy, but so were the copper wires connecting the batteries to each other and to the equipment they supplied. Fun fact on one of the Chicago buildings is that it was built with no provisions for heating the floors with equipment. The equipment itself made enough heat to keep the building warm. It did have air conditioning though. As equipment for smaller and more efficient, it produced less heat, to the point that there were concerns about whether the equipment would work on cold days. Interior equipment was only tested to 0C/32F, non-condensing. Windowless buildings have been a hallmark of telephone equipment for many years, and you will find a building like that in almost every town in the US. Tall ceilings were a reflection of the high equipment from older times that had many relays to direct calls. In particular, step-by-step switches were very tall, and maintained with ladders attached to a rail attached to the ceiling which could be moved. I may or may not have been discovered playing with those ladders while doing some unrelated work in an old central office. I doubt there is much spy equipment in Chicago. I have no first-hand knowledge (or I wouldn't be allowed to say anything), but most of the spy equipment I've read about was on the coasts, as the NSA is only allowed to intercept foreign calls. Still, CALEA does require telephone carriers to provide for legal wiretapping capabilities when a search warrant permits it. Stories I heard about CALEA capabilities were that at least 5 different agencies should be able to tap a particular number without any agency knowing any other agency was interested in the same number. This would keep local police (more easily corrupted because there are more officers) from Knowing that the FBI or DEA was interested in a certain number. VOIP using applications has challenged these capabilities, especially foreign controlled apps like Telegram.

Men in black headquarters

33 Thomas St was also the inspiration for "The Oldest House" in the game Control (2019). Its in-game address is even a direct reference - 34 Thomas St.

There is a Verizon concrete monolith in Manhattan that can be seen from Brooklyn Bridge Park. Around 8 years ago they covered it up with glass, pretending to be an all glass skyscraper. Any millenial or older newyorker knows it is solid concrete behind that glass wall.

"When a population fears its government, there is tyranny. When a government fears its population, there are buildings like the ones featured in this video and we get more 3 letter agencies like the NSA and the ATF so the government can crush our liberties with greater efficiency."...and the government uses our tax dollars to do it.

I live in Fresno, CA, and there is a similar building in our downtown. It's only about 150 feet tall, but it's a windowless concrete building owned by AT&T. Looks just like the ones in the video. Now I wonder what it's doing there!🧐

The creepiest thing about 1122 3rd Ave, here in Seattle, is that it butts right up against the sidewalk. It's a giant, mostly windowless building, with a high security entrance, that you can lean against while you're waiting for your bus.

They were built primarily to serve as easy-to-service centers for the massive banks of telephone switching equipment. Nowadays, with the switching equipment going mostly electronic, the space opened up are now being used for web server farms used by the likes of Google, Cloudflare, Microsoft and other companies that doe a lot of web hosting.

I appreciate that Zach Mortice, architecture critic, is wearing a shirt with 33 Thomas St. tower on it. Nice touch 👌

You can find these structures in the city centre of most major cities as this is how the early telephone system was structured as wires ran in/out to link telephones in businesses and homes. There’s a particularly curious tower in central Tokyo near Shinjuku that resembles a windowless, shrunk Empire State Building. They were generally wireless and self-sufficient as the early telephone system was a huge capital investment by these companies and the lifeline in times of disaster particularly when services like electricity and water are cut off for whatever reason. This was not a conspiracy by governments but sound corporate investments in critical telecommunications infrastructure before microwave and wireless technologies. The same logic and hard structures reside in dozens of server farms that comprise “the cloud” though often located outside major cities for their security. Consider them as the telecom version of railway shuttling yards that were built to manage vast networks of freight or passenger trains.

One thing that's interesting is that the US built these skyscrapers while in Europe, both east and west built TV towers instead, with the Berlin one being the most famous. The thought behind them was the same, house telecom and TV equipment in a reinforced location that was hardened against attack, but the execution was different. The idea behind a tower is that the circular shape would let most of a nuclear blast pass the tower without putting a great force on it. Though their secrecy varied a lot, the Berlin one was always intended to be a tourist attraction while the one in London wasn't even on official maps until recently and was treated as a state secret.

these buildings are not overbuilt just because of attack in the cold war but also analog phone hardware of the era they were built in was physically heavy. Whole floors of mechanical phone switches doing what is today done in a few racks of digital switching.

This is wild. Never knew anything about these buildings. Thanks!

I worked in the one you mention on Folsom St in San Francisco. It’s simply the AT&T telephone exchange.