This has been something that has intrigued me to no ends. How does one go about getting a secret passage, or a secret workshop, built in the modern days?
Say you are building your own house on your own parcel of land. Do you just causally walk up to Joe Architect and says, “Hey, Joe, I think I need a secret passageway connecting the bedroom to the library.” ?
Would architectures honour the requests? Do you need to list “Secret Worshop” in the blueprints? Must you inform the police or something? Do you have to kill Joe Architect afterwards?
That’s pretty much how you’d do it - unless you’re designing and building the place yourself. GC’s and architects would probably honor your requests, up to the point where it would violate building codes.
As to informing the police - I don’t think you have to let the cops know, but many municipalities require you to submit architectural plans, which are kept on file. So, from that perspective, you could have a hidden passageway (i.e., the door is behind a bookcase or something), but probably not secret to anyone willing to spend a little time at the planning office.
Mrs. Shibb’s ancestral home has a secret passageway built into it. They built it in case of pirate attacks. It came in handy when the Japanese invaded last century, too. But I think the place is around 200-300 years old.
At least that’s what they always do in books and movies. I would imagine that builders specializing in Secret Labs and things are always on the lookout for good temps.
Well obviously you have them build a secret passage AND a small stone chamber in the basement. When they’re done you invite them to toast the completed work with a drink you have, of course, drugged. You then drag them into the chamber and wall them up in it.
If you’re going to do this you have to get in the evilly ironic aspect.
Remember to include in your budget extra bricks, mortar, some chains and a good cask of amontillado.
One of my occasionally recurring dreams includes a bit house with a crawlway along the top of the peaked roof that leads to to a cupola on the roof. Damnned if I know what it means but it’s a fun dream and I want to build that feature into a house someday.
Thanks for the link silenus. I particularly like the hidden gun safe.
And remember to dress the architect in jester costume.
Back on topic…
I didn’t look through thoroughly, but wouldn’t the authourity would like to keep tabs on whom has been installing Emergency Weapon Caches and Secret Hide-aways? I mean, a house filled with some installations seem to be haven for some crimelords.
I’ve always wanted to try some amomtillado, but have somehow been afraid to. We looked at a home in Cincinnati which had a secret room hidden by a bookcase. It was just out of our range but we really should have stretched to buy it.
I imagine that true crimelords, evil geniuses, etc. would bribe the architect and contractors to keep their little secret. Anybody who’d actually file architectural plans with a “secret” passage would be harmless.
That’s an interesting question. Would be there be any legal ramifications if the blueprints were innacurate? Could you or the architect go to jail? Could the architect lose his license?
If you do want to leave the secret passage off the blueprints, and if the passage is fairly narrow, you could just have the blueprints list the rooms on either side as being a foot or two wider than they really are, and viola, the passage is hidden from anyone at the planning office. You’d have to measure the rooms to discover that something was off.
There was a kidnapper a few years ago who kidnapped a girl. The police never found the secret passageway and quarter where he was holding the victim. He finally confessed and showed it to them. The entrance was in the garage, and there was a long tunnel, and finally a small room with a television in it. I can’t imagine that this was filed with any city plans!
Now that I have a house with a basement and a sizeable yard, I’ve been wanting to erect a pole barn. A secret underground passageway would be way cool! And a good means of avoiding the cold.
I would definitively say that as for criminal charges, it depends.
If the building ending up violating codes and it was shown that the architect didn’t file the correct plans, there would be some followup by the appropriate state agency. If someone got hurt or killed, there could be criminal charges.
I’m assuming that this putative secret passageway was installed AFTER the building inspector came by also. Or else you could have a fairly bad inspector.
I can’t find a reference right now but I think Arizona has or had a statute prohibiting rooms fortified against law enforcement or something like that. Google isn’t much help and only turns up statutes concerning fortified wine.
I think the real problem here is that modern houses don’t have a whole lot of wall space for you to hide secret passages in. So you’d probably have to start with a very large house with a non-intuitive room layout so that someone can’t just judge the rooms by their size. Maybe put an extra large walk-in closet in the master bedroom and then wall off half of it with a hidden door. I doubt you’d get in any trouble with the building inspectors because the false partition would not be structural. (Fire inspector might frown on a room with no easy egress, though. This would, at least, give you a hidden closet or nook to keep your secret crime-fighting equipment in.
If someone had the blueprints, they could probably find such a hidden room by the dimensions, but it wouldn’t show as a separate area.
A passageway, though, is a completely different matter. If all you want is to unobtrusively get to the next room over, it would be easy enough to arrange a sliding panel. But your standard 2x4 construction doesn’t really allow for an extended passageway that goes anywhere interesting. For one thing, you obviously can’t run the passageway along any wall that has windows or doors. And very few modern houses have long unbroken spans of wall.
All this said, I’ve been in some old rambling Victorians where I was still discovering rooms I hadn’t seen before three days into my stay, so it’s certainly possible to have a hidden room if the house’s geometry is bizarre enough.
