Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for tours (parts of it anyways). They built the current downtown on top of the old one, so it's pretty surreal down there.
Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and covered on top.
It's wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are frequently seen as unfathomable.
Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes.
Kinda like a giant codebase that's been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult.
Find a place people don't already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there?
Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
The history of Seattle is fairly interesting for those who are not aware of it. A lot of cities have rebuilt from fires, done terraforming etc, Seattle kind of took it to a whole new level.
If you want to see something trippy, take a look at the land just west of Magnolia and Discovery Park on the King County Parcel Viewer. They were planning to fill that in back in the day and on the map you can still see all of the streets they planned and even some parcels that are still owned by people who tried to buy in early. All underwater of course.
I grew up in Seattle, and my parents would sometimes mention the underground tour, but I never actually saw it until I was in my late 20s and I took my girlfriend home to visit.
When I did the tour, the guide really played up the brothel/prohibition angle and made a few off-color jokes about that part of the history (more burlesque humor than outright offensive). So maybe that's why parents never took me.
I’m not sure what the mechanism for burying a town or city section is. It seems to have happened since antiquity, so it’s obviously the rational choice over millennia, but my intuition doesn’t connect. (Aside from soil deposits and erosion.)
For ancient archeological sites, burial happens when places get abandoned (typically due to war, or economic reasons, or famine). A lot of land isn't flat, so to build structures you have to level off a piece of land which involves moving dirt from one place to another. After a couple centuries of abandonment natural flooding and erosion will move that dirt around and bury the structures. New settlements come in and build on top of the new surface layer.
For cities like Seattle, the original town was all wood and burned. Prior to that it was prone to flooding. During the reconstruction they decided to haul in dirt to raise the level of the city for better water management, but that would take a while. So businesses were rebuilt in place (but out of brick and stone), while dirt was being hauled in and new street levels were raised. New buildings were then built on top of the existing (essentially turning the existing ones into basements / foundations for the new ones). Similar thing in Chicago -- the city was raised up, and the second floors of buildings became the ground floor, first floor became basements, etc.
Tacoma has some underground, too. Worked in a building where they had us in a shitty office on the bottom floor, in back, butted up against the hillside.
We figured out there was some kind of storage back there, and because the place smelled so musty and the ventilation was so bad we were kinda curious. We rigged the door so that once it was opened it wouldn't latch shut again and waited; a few days later we were in luck.
Going through the door there was the whole brick facade of the building (burnt, ironically), and the bottom of the present day sidewalk, three stories up.
The did it in 2 stages. Before that, you need to know some history. A fire burnt down the majority of downtown. So, they had to rebuild everything anyway. The downtown was also low enough that the sewer would flow into the bay at high tide. After the fire, they made certain parts of the downtown streets up to 2 stories higher to accommodate a functional sewer system.
First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. Once the streets were in place, they made the sidewalk and the new storefronts on the old first or second story. So, when you walk around that part of Seattle, there is sometimes just two stories of air beneath the sidewalk. You can identify these sidewalks through their use of amethyst blocks which actually serve/served as sunlight. As you can imagine, a block can consist of a single large structure and so sometimes the basement of these buildings are huge empty spaces. If I recall correctly, the Seattle underground is actually disappearing as development occurs and put these large basements into use. However, I do believe there is a movement to try to preserve at least part of the underground by simply buying enough adjoining buildings and funding their upkeep with tours (which is where I got this information). In terms of touristy things, I think definitely one of the more unique things in the USA and probably has similar vibes to the catacombs of Paris (without the bones).
This is exactly underground Atlanta. They raised the ground level and built the new city on top of the old. The old storefronts and businesses are still there. About 1/8th of it is publicly open, but there's a ton more that's closed off and is just trains driving under the city.
There used to be tours of the Detroit Salt Mines, and indeed the Detroit Salt Company is still alive today.
Near the "Uniroyal Giant Tire" [1] off of I-94 is a small tunnel that goes under the freeway. Not the same as these, but, well, as interesting as the freeway tunnel I suppose.
Wow, I live five minutes from that tire. Since I was young I've passed it a million times on the freeway and also checked out the service enterence for it but it was all gated off.
One of my favorite activities in college was exploring the campus - there were parts that weren't closed off to students, but I felt like we were probably not supposed to be in. It was fascinating walking around, looking at the weird architecture - in some places, the ceilings were barely six feet tall, and at one point to move between two adjacent buildings you had to use a door that was half the height of a regular one. Just a bizarre space that, nowadays, would be likened to "the backrooms".
A few years ago I had the pleasure of spending 10 weeks in hospital, which as well as having bits dating back to 1860 and being extended every couple of decades, is also attached to the local uni. The only way I stayed sane was spending my nights exploring as much as I could, made all the more exciting by having to crawl up stairs and drag my wheelchair behind me. I decided very quickly that "no public access" signs didn't apply as I wasn't a member of the public, I was an inpatient.
Elevators are particularly interesting. You might need a key-card to get onto the 4th floor, but it turns out that for efficiency half the elevators waited on that top floor. Get into elevator, read book for 5 minutes, wait for it to reset, go home and let you out in the restricted section. Or this entire floor is locked off from the stairway, but the floor above is open and the elevator lets me go down a floor and get out.
It's honestly amazing where you can end up, especially if you combine boredom, time and a bit of a can-do attitude. One of my favourite games was using the stick from an ice-lolly (sold from a machine in reception) to jimmy the lock on badly fitted doors. I also found an ebay pair of scrubs to be really useful once I'd worked out how to get into places - you'd go down a corridor, have people stick their heads out of doors and start with "Hey! You can't be down her---oh sorry doctor". I ended up reporting most of it to security just after I got released. They refused to engage, but had swapped out all the locks when I had a check-up a year later.
I recently got to see the backrooms of an MIT building in sub basement 2. You had to go through some tight spaces (think ~20") and there was some rotating machinery to stay away from. I was surprised at how big it was. When I first went in I thought it was just the narrow corridor with the large air handler units, but it snaked around a corner to reveal itself to be 4-5 times that size.
The entire MIT campus is connected through underground hallways, most in use as labs. It's not all in ship shape, but tunnels and underground labs and industrial machinery do entertain my inner child.
I've heard UWisc's steam pipe service tunnels are cool to see, but I never got a chance to explore them while I was there.
Same, we had steam tunnels that you could get into if you were careful -- both not to get caught and not to get burned. Mechanical rooms that were often unlocked. Weird spots between buildings where additions were made.
I’ve seen a few of those. It’s really surreal. It makes me feel like our history has been fudged and the singularity already happened. It’s surreal especially with all the graffiti mentioning similar scenarios, or the bullet casings. But even outside of that just the crazy amount of buildings that suddenly appear. It’s pretty wild.
The most interesting are the places that look like a time capsule or museum --- where everything hasn't been touched for decades, and the urban explorers who come along also respect that.
There are tunnels under the Detroit River too, for rail and cars crossings to Canada. The two downtowns are directly across the river. So a cool thing would be a Gondola. Things went to shit after 911. Instead of opening the borders like in the European Union. The borders got more closed down, and things regressed.
Im not entirely sure how your drawing your conclusion.
I grew up in suburban Detroit. Access to Canada has always been easy. You need proper identification, but it’s not by any means “locked down”. Beyond personal experience, I had acquaintances with cottages in Canada. They never have any issues traveling.
Was a gradual shift after 9/11. US started requiring passports (on paper, but if you're a US citizen entering without one, I don't think they can do much more than give you a hard time). Lots more quizzing upon entry into US.
Good ole days (pre-2000) meant giving a verbal declaration of citizenship and being sure to have a decades old crumbly birth certificate if they asked.
Canada technically doesn't require passports at the land border, but they make it more of a hassle if you don't have one.
On the plus side, the Canadian side cares a lot less about whether returning Canadians owed taxes & duties. The booths used to be staffed by a division of the CRA (Canadian IRS) and unarmed.
How did they miss the tunnel from the Detroit News building to the former studios of WWJ? They are essentially the same paper these days.
The tunnel is under LaFayette Blvd. The Detroit News remains but the TV station is next door. The beautiful Alfred Kahn designed studios are now an AFL-CIO union hall.
The main theater used for live TV at the old studios is still magnificent.
I've long wanted to know if my condo building's basement was once hooked up to the Chicago Tunnel Company tunnels. It was built as an office building in the loop in 1913, and there were certainly tunnels down both streets that my building abuts, so it seems fairly likely, but who knows...
Readit News
Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and covered on top.
Kinda like a giant codebase that's been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult.
Find a place people don't already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there?
Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
It’s the only article linked with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle, however.
"fairly interesting" is quite the understatement! Absolutely fascinating and hilarious at the same time! Thanks for your post TIL
When I did the tour, the guide really played up the brothel/prohibition angle and made a few off-color jokes about that part of the history (more burlesque humor than outright offensive). So maybe that's why parents never took me.
For cities like Seattle, the original town was all wood and burned. Prior to that it was prone to flooding. During the reconstruction they decided to haul in dirt to raise the level of the city for better water management, but that would take a while. So businesses were rebuilt in place (but out of brick and stone), while dirt was being hauled in and new street levels were raised. New buildings were then built on top of the existing (essentially turning the existing ones into basements / foundations for the new ones). Similar thing in Chicago -- the city was raised up, and the second floors of buildings became the ground floor, first floor became basements, etc.
We figured out there was some kind of storage back there, and because the place smelled so musty and the ventilation was so bad we were kinda curious. We rigged the door so that once it was opened it wouldn't latch shut again and waited; a few days later we were in luck.
Going through the door there was the whole brick facade of the building (burnt, ironically), and the bottom of the present day sidewalk, three stories up.
Or are the underground building like a -1 floor to the ones above?
First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. Once the streets were in place, they made the sidewalk and the new storefronts on the old first or second story. So, when you walk around that part of Seattle, there is sometimes just two stories of air beneath the sidewalk. You can identify these sidewalks through their use of amethyst blocks which actually serve/served as sunlight. As you can imagine, a block can consist of a single large structure and so sometimes the basement of these buildings are huge empty spaces. If I recall correctly, the Seattle underground is actually disappearing as development occurs and put these large basements into use. However, I do believe there is a movement to try to preserve at least part of the underground by simply buying enough adjoining buildings and funding their upkeep with tours (which is where I got this information). In terms of touristy things, I think definitely one of the more unique things in the USA and probably has similar vibes to the catacombs of Paris (without the bones).
Near the "Uniroyal Giant Tire" [1] off of I-94 is a small tunnel that goes under the freeway. Not the same as these, but, well, as interesting as the freeway tunnel I suppose.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Uniroyal+Tire/@42.2714...
Any more details on the tunnel?
There were also a lot of brine wells south of Detroit, where they mined salt by forcing hot water down into a hole and bringing up the brine.
There's some really cool videos of people in London in all sorts of tunnels and places they shouldn't be in.
Elevators are particularly interesting. You might need a key-card to get onto the 4th floor, but it turns out that for efficiency half the elevators waited on that top floor. Get into elevator, read book for 5 minutes, wait for it to reset, go home and let you out in the restricted section. Or this entire floor is locked off from the stairway, but the floor above is open and the elevator lets me go down a floor and get out.
It's honestly amazing where you can end up, especially if you combine boredom, time and a bit of a can-do attitude. One of my favourite games was using the stick from an ice-lolly (sold from a machine in reception) to jimmy the lock on badly fitted doors. I also found an ebay pair of scrubs to be really useful once I'd worked out how to get into places - you'd go down a corridor, have people stick their heads out of doors and start with "Hey! You can't be down her---oh sorry doctor". I ended up reporting most of it to security just after I got released. They refused to engage, but had swapped out all the locks when I had a check-up a year later.
The entire MIT campus is connected through underground hallways, most in use as labs. It's not all in ship shape, but tunnels and underground labs and industrial machinery do entertain my inner child.
I've heard UWisc's steam pipe service tunnels are cool to see, but I never got a chance to explore them while I was there.
[0] https://localwiki.org/ann-arbor/Steam_Tunnels
> the bullet casings
> the crazy amount of buildings that suddenly appear
???
The most interesting are the places that look like a time capsule or museum --- where everything hasn't been touched for decades, and the urban explorers who come along also respect that.
I grew up in suburban Detroit. Access to Canada has always been easy. You need proper identification, but it’s not by any means “locked down”. Beyond personal experience, I had acquaintances with cottages in Canada. They never have any issues traveling.
Good ole days (pre-2000) meant giving a verbal declaration of citizenship and being sure to have a decades old crumbly birth certificate if they asked.
Canada technically doesn't require passports at the land border, but they make it more of a hassle if you don't have one.
On the plus side, the Canadian side cares a lot less about whether returning Canadians owed taxes & duties. The booths used to be staffed by a division of the CRA (Canadian IRS) and unarmed.
Deleted Comment
The tunnel is under LaFayette Blvd. The Detroit News remains but the TV station is next door. The beautiful Alfred Kahn designed studios are now an AFL-CIO union hall.
The main theater used for live TV at the old studios is still magnificent.