You’re forgiven if you assumed 58 Joralemon Street was just another beautifully restored Greek Revival row house in Brooklyn Heights.
Built in 1847, it resembles many of the elegant single-family houses on the block, with its red brick facade, long windows, and brownstone trim around the entryway.
But take a closer look, and you’ll notice some oddities. For starters, the windows are black, and no curtains or blinds hang behind them.
No personal effects sitin the windows or on the stoop, like a planter or a mat for muddy shoes. And the garden level is blocked off by an industrial-style cover with a red FDNY-labeled pipe by the sidewalk.
So what’s with this impersonal, almost creepily empty house—which looks similarly empty in this 1940 photo?
It’s not a house at all but a deftly designed subway ventilation shaft. And it’s one of several fake row houses hiding in New York’s residential streetscape, tasked with a secret purpose.
The story of 58 Joralemon’s conversion from dwelling to decoy begins in 1908, when IRT trains were extended from Bowling Green in Manhattan to the new Brooklyn Borough Hall stop, according to Atlas Obscura.
IRT engineers needed to ventilate the new subway tunnel, and they decided 58 Joralemon Street would be the optimal place for a vent. By this time, the house was already a multi-resident building. IRT officials purchased it and gutted the interior.
“Beyond the front doors are walls covered with electric panels and switches, and a huge series of catwalks and stairs that lead nine stories below to the subway tracks,” wrote Suzanne Spellen at Brownstoner.
“In addition to being ventilation, the house is an emergency exit from the tunnel that leaves Brooklyn and travels under the river to the Bowling Green station,” continued Spellen.
I don’t know how many fake row houses exist in New York; this isn’t the kind of information that’s easy to find. But up in the Bronx, there’s an entire faux development holding a secret behind its gates.
This row house community lines Bruckner Boulevard between East 142nd and East 144th Streets in the Mott Haven neighborhood.
The homes don’t seem very New York; they’re more like townhouse condos in an upscale southern suburb. They do have architectural details like pediments over windows and entryways, perhaps an attempt to blend into the South Bronx cityscape.
Too bad they’re nothing more than facades masking a Con Ed substation. Officially known as the Mott Haven substation, it was built in 2007. Presumably the fake houses went up at that time as well.
Why such an elaborate cover for a necessary public utility that creates the electricity allowing New Yorkers to run their air conditioners and digital devices? According to a 2008 New York Times article about the substation, Con Ed is just trying to be a good neighbor.
“Years ago, few would have mistaken a substation for an impressive apartment building, especially in a neighborhood like Mott Haven, filled with warehouses and factories,” wrote the Times‘ Ken Belson.
“But the substation there, with its red and tan brick exterior, faux windows and canopied entrance, certainly does not look like a hub for 345-kilovolt cables, multimillion-dollar transformers, and circuit breakers.”
“The building’s urban camouflage is typical of the lengths that Con Edison must go to these days to appease neighbors when constructing substations, where high-voltage electricity is reduced to lower voltages and distributed locally,” reported Belson, who added that locals have mistakenly asked Con Ed “when the condominiums inside were going on sale.”
[Second photo: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]