Secret Rooms and Passages

Given the over-regulation of everything and the requirement to have building permits for anything, is it possible in this day and age to build a house with a secret room or a secret passage or two? Or, at least, a really, really well-concealed entrance to a room or a hallway. If I ever win the lottery ;), I’ll need to know.

Some number of moons ago (a year or two) there was an article in the New York Times about this very thing. It was commenting on a mini-trend among fashionable types to have secret hideaways built into their homes for protection in case of intruders. I can’t remember much of the details, but there I can’t imagine that it would be illegal to do it, unless you were tunnelling under your neighbor’s property or something.

I’d have to assume that it IS legal, cause my house has two concealed areas (no i’m not going to tell you where they are…that’s why they’re concealed. Well, at any rate, they were added on while we were doing construction on the house, which was somewhat recently.

I’m not sure I follow why, just because you have a contractor build a secret room/ closet/ hallway that is otherwise up to code and structural sound why there would be an issue?

I assume, the issue we are really talking about is the fact it isn’t secret, per say, if it’s in revised blueprints of the house that would be available through a number of different means to third parties who could find out about them.

Well, my answer there would be that:

  1. If someone has done this level of background research on the house to find out it has the hidden passage, they are not just your average thief and could probably find it through other means (surveillance through windows when you go in, or various tools that could be used to detect false walls, etc.

  2. Just because you have a hidden room, hall, etc, doesn’t mean you have to leave it WIDE OPEN. Geez, put a locking door or other (normal security) device on it in addition to hiding it, plus other detection tools to tell you if someone has been in there in your absence (TV cameras, infrared dyes, hidden pieces of sticky tape).

That should be all you need

Not at all. I had a builder friend build one in my basement and to keep it out of the city records, no permits were pulled and no plans filed. I just drew some sketches, we worked it all out and he built it for me.

I would like to build a glass bottle wall along the front of my place, like you see in those ‘weird home’ shows and books, but you can’t just do that here. Permits need to be pulled, the foundation has to be laid by a contractor, then inspected and there has to be a setback of so many feet, and if you build it yourself, it has to be inspected frequently for stability, it has to meet code, and on and on and on.

I’ve got to find out where those folks live who just splapped together houses out of self poured cement, bottles and eccentric things and did not get stopped by code enforcement.

65 posts, and you expect us to tell you about secret passages? Heck, they haven’t told me yet either! :smiley:

I’ve built a couple hidden rooms/closets.Using a raised paneling system we’ve hidden many doors and little areas.Building rooms really doesn’t effect the structure of the building, but building a house you’ll have 40 or so people that will know your secrets though.

Bear in mind that a reasonably observant person can very often detect hidden areas in buildings by looking at the proportions of the place. That won’t necessarily reveal the entrance to those places, but it would likely make people curious. I’ve found several hidden rooms/closets in this fashion in the past while running cables.

Basements are generally an exception to this. Building a hidden room in a basement is probably easier than putting in the basement itself. Don’t forget the artistically placed cobwebs, now.

I remember my physics teacher telling us about Dean Camen (sp?), some technological genius. One of his big accomplishments was building a wheelchair that could successfully manuver stairs and such. Anyways, he had a huge house. Every year he’d host parties for the US FIRST Robotics team, in his home. Someone once asked him how he let hundreds of people into his home each year, without feeling like his privacy was being invaded. Apparently he had rooms within the rooms. Tons of secret passages, everywhere. The idea always sounded really cool to me.

On a related note, has anyone ever discovered an already hidden room? Leftovers from the Underground Railroad, etc?

My wife and I bought and refurbished an old Victorian house a few years back and we added a couple of fun things (we think) We have a “secret” passage that begins in the closet of the office and ends in the dining room via a china hutch. We also converted two back-to-back closets into a passage between two bed rooms. We also converted a large closet in a combined bedroom into a “hidden” room. The entrance is masked by a large quilt.

We also put in a fire pole between the first and second floors (bedroom to dining room). That was tricky and expensive, however. Real estate people warn us that we should not tell our insurance people about it and that it will severly limit the resale value of the house.

Our next project is to convert one of the upstairs rooms into a forest glade with “tree” wallpaper a “sky” ceiling and a couple of hallowed out real trees going from floor to ceiling and a log and large rock for sitting on the floor.

So far no problems with bilding permits. In fact only problems so far is friends with children wanting to visit a lot. Oh, yeah, we put a locking door on the hole in the floor where the fire pole comes out of the second floor.

TV

When my old roommate was looking to buy a house, he came across a new townhouse plan that had a hidden study, with the entryway hidden behind a sliding bookcase in the master bedroom.

It was a half-level lower than the bedroom, and intertwined somehow with the stairways to the floors above and below. Unless you knew it was there, it would’ve been hard to deduce that there was a room hidden there.

I want one in my first house. I always imagined building one below the foundation, kind of like the underground forts my friends and I always built in our back lots. But I imagine digging around an existing foundation is probably pretty dangerous.

Well I have always wanted a fire pole and hidden rooms and passagways so if you ever want to sell your house let me know.

Does anyone remember this child molester/kidnapper who had this incredible bunker under his house? I saw the story on TV and was impressed by the extensive and sturdy construction. You entered through a hidden place in the basement wall, walked down a long, cement tunnel with lights, turned a corner and entered a small room. there he had more lights, supplies of water, and stuff and a heavy, locked door. Behind the door he had a largish cement room, probably 10 by 10 x 7, equipped with bunks, portable toilet, lights, ventilation, food stocks, a chair or two and water!

The cops found it by accident. I was amazed by the amount of labor the nut case had to have secretly done alone in building it. It was so well built that the cops were able to pull it out of the ground intact!

In my ‘wild days’ I installed a small stash slot in the corner of a closet, behind the molding, that, the one time I was searched by the cops, was never found. The secret is to make it solid, keep it free of all dirty hand prints, and keep the closet well dusted and hide the cuts to resemble regular molding. Plus, I installed the molding with screws, so my special place had to be unscrewed to get it open. The cops could just not randomly pull on things and pop it open.

That was way back when.

Not quite on-topic, but related to…
A few years ago, a buddy of mine told me that when he was in high school, he found a tunnel starting in an old closet in a classroom, which went down into a network of tunnels under the old section of the city, and into a stocked underground shelter. Now, I don’t know if he was just pulling a fast one on me, or if it was legit, but if it was true, I’d love to get down into that…
He told me that there was one particular door that was locked, and he has no idea where that leads to…

anybody else know of anything like this?

Glenoled

A little of topic, but not much.

I grew up in southern Ohio, and locally there was a house known as the “Counterfeit House”. Local legend has it the house was built solely to be used as a base for manufacturing conterfeit money although this was never proven.

It has four fireplaces, but only one is functional. Pipes run from the functional fireplace to the other three, presumably so that from the outside smoke could be seen coming from all four chimneys. There’s at least one small hidden room in the chimney space of one of the non-functional fireplaces; I think the other two are smaller and are more hidden storage areas rather than rooms.

At least part of the roofing is lead sheet. The theory is the lead was used to mint conterfeit coins, and by using it as roofing it was hidden in plain sight.

There’s also a story that there was a tunnel under the house that led to a hidden outlet on the Ohio river, that the press used to make the counterfeit money was hidden in the tunnel, and that the occupants used the tunnel to escape (detonating explosives behind them to collapse the tunnel) when it looked like they might be caught. Most of that is speculation or rumor; I’ve heard there is some small area dug out under the house but it’s a big stretch to go from that to the whole tunnel to the river thing.

I was once invited to a dinner party, and we found two secret passages. One led from the conservatory to the kitchen and the other one led from the library to the study. Boy did we have lots of fun that night, monkey brain soup, 5 dead people, and a mysterious call from J. Edgar Hover.

And if anyone wants to know who killed Mr. Body, I did, in the hallway with the revolver!

This discussion reminds me of the Winchester Mansion-ever hear of it? Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester, manufactorer of the Winchester Rifle had a house that she kept building onto 24/7/365 until she died. When her husband died, a psychic told her that she would remain forever haunted by the souls killed by her husbands’ guns, but if she bought a house and kept building on it and NEVER, EVER stopping-she would be left alone. I’d LOVE to visit it someday!

It IS a terribly cool, although eerie tour. I’ve been several times, being a California native. Most of her wierdness was sue to building errors, since she had so much going on and no blueprints.
One of those things that are more than worth the price of admission. (For the Tiffany glass alone!)

And this psychic also owned the local lumber yard and hardware store right?

Ha ha. Seriously, beats me. Either, way, who cares? It’s a work of art. Doors open out into nowhere-(on second story and above), staircases leading to the ceiling, funny little rooms, and everything centered around the number 13. It’s truly the work of an eccentric, but it’s awesome.
Supposedly, they’re still finding more and more stuff.