Little secret: every city in the USA has 'one of those' buildings. In Seattle, it was a Bell systems telephone switching center. Abstract art bits on the outside of the building, to distract from not having windows. I worked there for about two years installing cables, tearing out some old equipment. I never could find the cloning vats...
The one in Dallas is extremely creepy. It looks old and outdated, and it has very few windows and looks like a giant cube with a bunch of white unmarked cars always parked in the parking lot. If the one in New York is a supervillians secret lair, the one in Dallas is the type of building you get kidnapped at in the middle of the night. They both look like something straight out of 1984.
I used to do consulting work for Pacific Bell in California in the 1990s and got a number of back-room tours of facilities. Rooms requiring NSA clearance were pointed out.
It's really hard to get NSA clearance when there is No Such Agency. At least that was the running joke at Fort Meade, Maryland, when my dad worked guard duty at NSA headquarters.
My father used to work for Bell Telephones. As a kid I remember going into the AT&T long lines building in downtown chicago on Clark Street. One of the rooms I saw was meant to be a command room in case of WWIII. There was a wall of large paper maps. Although I couldn't find my house on the map I did find my school and stuck a thumb tack the location denoting my school. My dad said 15 years later, the tack was still there. I suppose it's good they never had to use that room.
Yeah, I remember the Clark Street building! It is a tough old building, would not be surprised if it is still there in another 50 years... tho I would not ever know. lol
AT&T owns the largest collection of nuclear hardened facilities in the world. This building is just the shiny object that distracts people from all the other mundane locations.
The largest building in my city, in the center of the township, no one notices it... I point it out and they're like "oh, what's that?" Oh, IDK one of the most important buildings in our entire region, providing telecommunications across half of the lower country. It's so damn secure too.
And a decent proportion of them are completely abandoned long lines nodes that anyone can just explore (illegally trespass), because long lines services are long obsolete.
@@PanoptesDreams Communications centres range from dull none descript buildings to sheds to industrial estate units, all looking dull and not interesting, but if you look closely, very closely and you'll spot hardened security entrances protected cameras around the entire building, and external connections for fuel and fire suppressants to be refilled. I've seen a few when I worked for an ISP, its pop sites were hidden in plain sight.
"We are the best kept secret in the galaxy. We monitor, licence and police all alien activity on the Earth. We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret, we exist in shadow."
"Your entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone you encounter. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly."
The mechanism for directing calls is called THE FRAME . My Father worked at 33 Thomas and my Grand mother at PENN PLAZA for AT&Ts predecessor LONGLINES .
Data centers just don't naturally have windows. When they buy out old buildings they just put walls up behind the windows too. I've been to plenty that you wouldn't look twice at but so much traffic goes through it
I have worked in data centres, some converted from old telecoms facilities. They were not especially secure ones though, just normal ones. I would have fingerprint, eye scanning, photo ID, "airlocks", and my access card would still only give me access to places I needed. The pipe workers would not get much more access than they did even if the building was just a plain old telecommunications building.
@@mycelia_ow BT had a tower in Cardiff city centre, a mixture of offices, and old telecoms spaces now converted for servers. I could only access 2 floors (toilet was on the floor above), 2 of the rooms, and had to use retinal scanners. As a rule, BT sites are pretty low security for data centres. (Some details could be wrong, been a while since I was in that building) Another data centre had unique to you PINs for all door, fingerprint ID, photo ID at the door, turnstiles and airlocks, razor wire on the fences, obviously CCTV everywhere. Again, just a normal data centre, not government or military, just normal companies. This one was not a converted telephone exchange though.
There is an AT&T hub in Nashville, TN. A disturbed individual blew himself and part of the building up with a truck bomb on Christmas morning in 2020. Knocked out our phone and internet service for days. That might actually be a good story for your team. Kind of creepy, with the music and the countdown before the explosion.
@@sauercarey There is a skyscraper called "The Batman Building" that's actually named the AT&T building, but the place that was destroyed was a few blocks from there. Only a couple of stories tall, but had several very important cables in it.
I recall that incident. 🏢 I'd call that more civil unrest or some nutcase making a statement rather than straight domestic terror. It was odd that it took place around Xmas. Kinda like Die Hard 1988. 🏢
When this building was constructed almost all telephones in use were connected by copper wires. Calls were routed through massive electro-mechanical switches. That's why the ceilings are so high and the building requires so much ventilation. That old equipment took up a lot of space and generated a lot of heat. Soon after this structure was completed the mechanical switches were replaced with fully electronic equipment that took up much less space. Today most phones are cellular but that doesn't mean there are no 'wires'. When someone makes a cellular call..text, whatever...the signal is transmitted to a nearby cell-site. The cell-site is connected to switching equipment via fiber optic cables. The calls still need to be processed and routed but now instead of tens of thousands of 'twisted pairs' running into a switching facility there are only a few fiber optic cables that flow massive amounts of data to machines that take up a fraction of the space that was needed for the old mechanical gear. I'm sure that building still houses tel-com equipment, but it probably only takes up a small part of the build. The the question begs: What's the rest of the space being used for?
I worked for the phone company in NYC from the '90s to 2010. I've been in this building plenty of times. You are correct, there was a lot of empty space where large analog equipment used to be. But they had floors and rooms that were locked out. Meaning you had no access for any reason. Nobody seemed to work there except for security personnel. Everyone else was there to do a job and then leave. The whole vibe was, do your work, don't ask questions, and leave.
I've seen that building In person one time by accident. I was in the subway system when I had to get out at a different stop than I planned. I walked around a minute to get a bearing. I pulled my phone out to check how far off I was from where I was going. I had a feeling I was standing next to something weird. I'm in lower Manhattan and there weren't any ground level windows next to me. I look at the building 8 feet to my right and just followed a windowless wall straight up into the sky. I just froze looking up. It was creepy...
During September 11th 2001 when I worked there Simon you’re mostly right. Some of us called it the bunker or the cage. 3 inches of rebar at the base is what I was told the building was anchored to. I was on the 24th floor for over 2 years. There’s at least 4 ways to enter without being seen. Your videos are amazingly accurate.
@@Funko777 I don't care either .. and if you don't know that people lie about literally everything in comments here then all I can say is welcome to RUclips.
@@mlfett6307 It's best to forget them. Everyone thinks Nicholas is teh crazy one in the Coppola family, but you've never met his brother, hence the high security containment building built for him to live in.
I live in New York City, born and raised. I never knew about this building until now. This reminds me of the building that the Nazis used in The Man in the High Castle series.
@@petebondurant58 Cause Americans elite are nothing more than wannabe Nazis. They try so hard to copy them and have a charisma like them but fail miserably
This is interesting, because the "room" he films these videos in seems a bit more mundane "home office", or "loft space" like, as opposed to "fortress of solitude". hehahe
It may be difficult to believe, but once upon a time connecting a phone call required actual machines designed to physically connect wires together, and the volume of calls from one heavily populated area to another required really large buildings to house all of that automated machinery. Over time, the size of the connecting machinery shrank until you reach the modern router which is about the size of a ham sandwich and does about 95% of the connecting work all by itself.
It really makes me wonder how much of it is still occupied. I have seen exchanges that are mostly empty now, the only reason they still exist in the property they are in is because they have access to the cables. They keep downsizing as tech gets better and better. Most could be knocked down and replaced with something the size of a small garden shed. They probably use it as a data centre, with a few upgrades it should be ideal.
Ok, so the bit about trade workers being denied access to certain rooms or information about what's inside *could* indicate covert espionage activity. But as the operator of a massive data network, you'd be kinda protective of it to extent of assuming anyone not thoroughly vetted to be a potential bad actor, and not only deny physical access to critical elements but also not leak any information on what those elements are or do, lest that information guide a subsequent attempt at infiltration. Should come as no surprise that a facility like that is being used for espionage, but it still needs to be aggressively defended against threats to its benign purpose.
Even a tiny network or tiny cloud computer operator simply doesn't give non-essential access to machine rooms. I worked in a minor branch office of a minor bank and only 4 people had access to the machine room, along with the vendors that absolutely had to be there. I took tours every 3 months as I was the head IT guy and wanted to be able to report that I didn't see any problems in there.
There is no objective proof that it is being used by the NSA however it wouldn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t care either way, they aren’t interested in you or I they are interested in terrorists, foreign adversaries communications, counter intelligence, etc and it’s not in our best interest to be against that. I think we should be happy that others are doing this on our behalf for the sake of our national security. Their work is much less glamorous and inherently clandestine so they get no recognition yet their role is critical.
I've worked in most of those. Some of the early ones were just part of the way computing has shrunk. So Telehouse was originally built as a computer centre for a bank, they didn't need all the space so leased out space. ISPs leased that and installed their kit in private or shared rooms. Security is strict because a lot of data flows through those buildings and there would be a lot of disruption if people unplugged the wrong thing.
We have two Sasktel data centers, one in downtown Regina and one in north industrial Saskatoon. Camera's everywhere, security fencing etc, 2-3 huge generators installed (as you can see the louvers and exhaust out the side), with massive fuel tanks for backup. Sasktel was the pioneer of fiber optics in telecommunications, and during the cold war, the Regina Sasktel buildings basement housed the backup systems for NORAD. Regina was a possible target by USSR because of that. 😉
Oh wow did you see the picture at exactly 12:47 of what looks like rows and rows of barrels? Those are all batteries!! I was in the business cell phone construction side and I worked at a mountain top facility and it also had rows and rows of batteries exactly like these in fact they were AT&T. All I'm getting at is they are so old and massive. I wonder how they will be safely disposed of? They weigh 100's of pounds each.
I suspect 20 year old single malt Scotch to while away the hours after a strike. Wondering if your family is dead, etc. On a more serious note, why barrels? Cylindrical batteries are space inefficient.
We have a windowless building in Anniston, AL and it is a AT&T building. it is connected to an older AT&T building but the public can't access the building. It located at 1316 Noble Street and the windowless building can be seen at 26 E 14th Street, Anniston, AL. There is also abandoned ATM machine building located at 1205 Leighton Ave, Anniston, AL. The property is supposedly owned by the nearby Baptist church but no one uses it and its covered partially by a parking lot. A little strange; don't you think.
> the public can't access the building I can't think of a single office building where the public can go wherever they want, except for buildings where offices are just one room for a 1-3 people.
I visited NY last in 2011, and remember passing by this building. It made an impression, that windowless building. I couldn't guess why it was built that way.
I've been inside ATT switch gear buildings. All I ever saw was Buildings full of Batteries and Switch Gear. Never saw a single person. Not even an office for anyone.
In Hartford, there's a former AT&T building (now owned by Frontier) and again it is windowless and is still full of batteries along with switchgear. There was a fire in the building last year where some of the batteries or wiring caught fire. Another reason for not having windows is probably to help carry the load of all those batteries.
Our landlines were all connected to CO's. Central Offices in cities. Every CO handled certain phone prefixes, which is why said prefixes were only in certain geographic areas. They handled all the local switching and had generators to run for days. Often natural gas. If one had buried utilities to the CO, you had phone service through natural disasters. I talked to my brother during the infamous Hurricane Andrew in Miami, and many years later a daughter during Hurricane Ike in Houston. Those days are gone as no phone company is providing copper lines anymore. I lived across from one in Denver, it was rather nice because they had their own small parking lot for the few employees instead of a big condo conversion with lots of residents looking for parking, partying, etc.
Oof, hearing 'The Intercept' almost had me tuning out immediately. At least they're consistent, predictably pointing out the obvious while omitting the relevant. Love to all
Interesting. I worked for AT&T for 28 years, most of that time was spent in buildings like these. They’re everywhere in cities over 100,000 people, and the bigger the city the taller these buildings were. It was a fun job, but much more mundane than alleged here.
I lived for 16 years only a few blocks away, and it was always uneasy when I was standing around outside of there, walking my dog, sitting down to eat or whatever. I was absolutely certain there was a snipers’ rifle pointed at me.
The use of tall buildings like this for telephone hubs and intercept stations is likely related to the fact that that prior to fiber optic cables AT&T operated a network of line-of-sight microwave relay stations. I lived in Kensington, MD in the mid-1970s when a similar tall windowless building was constructed just north of the I-495 DC Beltway and there was speculation it was some secret spy facility or missile silo but it turned out to be something even scarier, a Mormon Temple 😂
haha!! The boring Magic Kingdom... Always a mystery to me how best to get there from i-495... Connecticut ave or Beach drive/ Rock Creek Pwy. Then again i'm not part of the LDS, so never bothered to find out.
We have pretty much the SAME EXACT building in Massachusetts and its a AT&T building in Worcester looks exactly like that. Plus they will not let you in there NO MATTER what. They have the intercom and it takes seriously 10to 15 minutes for anyone to get to the door and when they open it you cant see anything inside the building from the door. I honestly thought that was the building Im talking about the second I seen it on this video. I sis Electrical work and they made me have a back round check to be able to get in to the building back in the 90s. It has its own self-sufficient living facilities and engines to run everything inside it. The things crazy and idk if its still owned by At&T or not anymore but its just exactly like this one. They said similar things about the nukeclear bomb stuff about it as well. This thing can take a hit and still be there basically. The building has 33 floors in the tall building. The thing is 617 feet tall and I'm telling you not much difference n the looks. They said similar things about the one in Worcester that he said in thie video about spying stuff. But seriously no Lie look it up 421 Grove st Worcester,MA I'm sure there's some way like google earth or someway to be able to see it.
Certainly looks like the same building, as the story was braking when the game was in development would not surprise me if the development team said yes that's a spooky government agency looking building let's copy that with a few changes to avoid copyright
@@EmpyreanFrostand yet Alan Wake 2 was such garbo in comparison. Hopefully Control 2 will be as good as the original though I doubt it. The Alan Wake crossover crap was horrible
The AT&T building in San Francisco with the NSA gear is at the corner of 2nd and Folsom. With so many international fibers it's probably not as useful as it used to be.
There were similar, smaller AT&T facilities across the US, also with off-limits areas. AT&Ts partners had a lot of presence. Things have changed. The increasing capacity of fiber optic lines and improvements in computing power has allowed both AT&T and their unnamed partners to relocate much of the actual work to central headquarters instead of using these old faclities directly. That is, they still gather sigint but the work is now done back at home base and these high security buildings are a lot emptier than they once were. AT&T has totally decommissioned some of their facilities like this and left them as empty rooms or with racks of derelict call switching gear, long ago turned off. It's all done remotely now.
OMFG Simon ... "an unidentified steamfitter" was denied full access to the worlds leading telecommunication company's technology site. Holy shit, that's it! It must be something nefarious.
It's been known for years that the Russian embassy's residence in Riverdale New York City is a listening post for their foreign intelligence service. The building was built one floor at a time and raised into position. It's called suspended street floor construction.
A nice hideout for a zombie apocalypse I see, A well fortified and supplied building, only thing is humans are more treacherous than the undead, at least you know a zombies sole intention.
I do Data Center HVAC and every city in the world has one of these. I've even worked at this one....I didn't see the whole building of course, but I do know that 90% of the real estate at 33 Thomas is AT and T servers.😎
13:49 That is all standard practice in any secure building. Any area some random idiot contractor could get lost or wander into, could very easily be infiltrated by a bad actor. Spend any time in Gov't/Defense, Telecom, Finance, Critical infrastructure and it becomes very common place. Why do you think everyone is wearing badges and there are hand geometry, iris, fingerprint readers with cameras over head all over?
Hey simon, putting this here because I assume new videos are more closely monitored - Atoms For Peace project video! All the mad stuff that was considered and anything that ever went beyond the drawing board
you have to wonder how much of that building is empty. This was built in the days of analog switches were racks of relay-type mechanical switches. Now everything is digital. I would imagine a lot of those analog switches replaced with racks of internet routers instead. Still, the tech has gotten a lot smaller. Who knows, maybe it still has entire floors filled with decommissioned switches?
@@JeffDeWitt I don’t know if they could get enough power in that building for a data center. Also, I don’t think it’s on a internet trunk line, where data center prefer to be.
Yeah I was wondering that but might be difficult to put in loads of new tech as I imagine the cooling would have to be really upgraded. Wont be quite rows and rows of Strowgers but bet there are empty racks...
@@simoncolenutt5228 No doubt the building was bult with some big freight elevators and cooling can be upgraded. It's worth spending money for a big data center. Over in South Bend, Indiana, Studebaker built a VERY solid factory building a century ago. Right next to it is a railroad which also has in its right of way one of the major fiber optic trunk lines that carries vast amount of internet traffic. That century old Studebaker building was rebuilt and now, among other things, has a big data center with as good Internet access as anywhere in the world.
hadabuddy comment. i had a buddy who told me about this place. he had to go in there in the late 80s early 90s when the internet went ballistic. he said getting into the place when the sun was up was no problem. after the sun went down in that part of town, it didn't matter how secure it was inside, the taxi driver would be his lookout and give him the "coast is clear" to run from the taxi to the entrance without getting robbed/mugged.
I have a suggestion for a video (which you've probably already done). How about a video on technological advancements of war, and how modern wars like Ukraine may influence the future.
Try times square during a Super Bowl..🤯 Only thing close I've experienced was Mardi Gras in New Orleans following Katrina. Freaking epic on both accounts.
I live just a few blocks from AT&T's windowless building in New Orleans, makes me wonder how many of these data centers there are around the country and everything that goes on inside them. I never see anyone go inside, there's one column of windows along one side, 2 doors, and some vents, that's it.
The news media was discussing this building and its use by intelligence agencies as long ago as the 1980's. Seriously; I can remember reading about this place that long ago.
I love the NSA T-Shirt 'In God We Trust, All Others We Monitor'.
i dont think they are religious at all. so it should be "in science we experiment, all others we observe" so it kind of related to scientific method
and the Jimmy Dubbs Space Telescope says, "Don't worry, I'll watch your blind-spot"
@@berdigylychrejepbayev7503 I think they have to at least pretend to believe in God, otherwise they get spied on as potential Communists. 😆
Little secret: every city in the USA has 'one of those' buildings.
In Seattle, it was a Bell systems telephone switching center.
Abstract art bits on the outside of the building, to distract from not having windows.
I worked there for about two years installing cables, tearing out some old equipment.
I never could find the cloning vats...
Every EU country has one of these buildings
And most of the data equipment is in the Westin Building or down in Tukwila.
The one in Dallas is extremely creepy. It looks old and outdated, and it has very few windows and looks like a giant cube with a bunch of white unmarked cars always parked in the parking lot. If the one in New York is a supervillians secret lair, the one in Dallas is the type of building you get kidnapped at in the middle of the night.
They both look like something straight out of 1984.
Buffalo has at least two of "those" buildings that I know about. Nice neighbors, keep to themselves. Never mind the unmarked vans coming and going....
Are you a clone?
I used to do consulting work for Pacific Bell in California in the 1990s and got a number of back-room tours of facilities. Rooms requiring NSA clearance were pointed out.
It's really hard to get NSA clearance when there is No Such Agency. At least that was the running joke at Fort Meade, Maryland, when my dad worked guard duty at NSA headquarters.
@@willythemailboy2I've been to Fort Meade. The main corridor is one mile long, allegedly 🙄
Walked by it everyday and not once have I been rewarded by an abduction. Total disappointment.
😂
golden comment 😂
I've been to NYC many times, I will look out for it. To be honest, I'd like to live in the basement 😊
Maybe you have been abducted but you the tracker in your brain stops you from remembering.
My father used to work for Bell Telephones. As a kid I remember going into the AT&T long lines building in downtown chicago on Clark Street. One of the rooms I saw was meant to be a command room in case of WWIII. There was a wall of large paper maps. Although I couldn't find my house on the map I did find my school and stuck a thumb tack the location denoting my school. My dad said 15 years later, the tack was still there. I suppose it's good they never had to use that room.
Yeah, I remember the Clark Street building! It is a tough old building, would not be surprised if it is still there in another 50 years... tho I would not ever know. lol
AT&T owns the largest collection of nuclear hardened facilities in the world. This building is just the shiny object that distracts people from all the other mundane locations.
The largest building in my city, in the center of the township, no one notices it...
I point it out and they're like "oh, what's that?"
Oh, IDK one of the most important buildings in our entire region, providing telecommunications across half of the lower country.
It's so damn secure too.
And a decent proportion of them are completely abandoned long lines nodes that anyone can just explore (illegally trespass), because long lines services are long obsolete.
So true. They got rid of most of them post Cold War.
@@PanoptesDreams Just like 33 Thomas St, the architect aimed for "Everyone, ignore this building!" and they were wildly successful.
@@PanoptesDreams Communications centres range from dull none descript buildings to sheds to industrial estate units, all looking dull and not interesting, but if you look closely, very closely and you'll spot hardened security entrances protected cameras around the entire building, and external connections for fuel and fire suppressants to be refilled. I've seen a few when I worked for an ISP, its pop sites were hidden in plain sight.
That was great Simon. Not only the content but also where the "film" stops and then backs up and then starts again, both the video and the audio. Fun!
"We are the best kept secret in the galaxy. We monitor, licence and police all alien activity on the Earth. We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret, we exist in shadow."
We are them, we are they, we are....
The Men in Black
*funky bass riff*
"Your entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone you encounter. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly."
If you wrote that from memory, that's scary
Never thought I’d hear Simon make a video about The Oldest House.
This was the inspiration for "The Oldest House" in the videogame Control. 👍🏻👍🏻
The mechanism for directing calls is called THE FRAME .
My Father worked at 33 Thomas and my Grand mother at PENN PLAZA for AT&Ts predecessor LONGLINES .
More unique / insightful perspective from a privileged (to be employed in such a way) position plz..
..Or, in other words: Go on..
A frame holds somethingin place, no diff than a gun, that has a trigger. Frame= structure Gate switch=Trigger
I work across the street from this building. It's fun watching all the tourists staring at it.
Jeez, sonds like a depressing view...do your office face this building?
Data centers just don't naturally have windows. When they buy out old buildings they just put walls up behind the windows too. I've been to plenty that you wouldn't look twice at but so much traffic goes through it
1 Wilshire
*Ah yes the Federal Bureau of Control* 👀
Was wondering if this was the inspiration for The Oldest House.
Was thinking the exact same thing. The entrance looks pretty damn similar too.
Yet, New York City is teeming with lawlessness.
Damn! You beat me to it.
Yup, definitely only needs Ahti sweeping the entrance
I have worked in data centres, some converted from old telecoms facilities. They were not especially secure ones though, just normal ones.
I would have fingerprint, eye scanning, photo ID, "airlocks", and my access card would still only give me access to places I needed.
The pipe workers would not get much more access than they did even if the building was just a plain old telecommunications building.
Does that apply to all telecom buildings though? An entire floor was off-limits here.
@@mycelia_ow BT had a tower in Cardiff city centre, a mixture of offices, and old telecoms spaces now converted for servers.
I could only access 2 floors (toilet was on the floor above), 2 of the rooms, and had to use retinal scanners.
As a rule, BT sites are pretty low security for data centres.
(Some details could be wrong, been a while since I was in that building)
Another data centre had unique to you PINs for all door, fingerprint ID, photo ID at the door, turnstiles and airlocks, razor wire on the fences, obviously CCTV everywhere. Again, just a normal data centre, not government or military, just normal companies.
This one was not a converted telephone exchange though.
There is an AT&T hub in Nashville, TN. A disturbed individual blew himself and part of the building up with a truck bomb on Christmas morning in 2020. Knocked out our phone and internet service for days. That might actually be a good story for your team. Kind of creepy, with the music and the countdown before the explosion.
Is that the one shaped like batman?
@@sauercarey There is a skyscraper called "The Batman Building" that's actually named the AT&T building, but the place that was destroyed was a few blocks from there. Only a couple of stories tall, but had several very important cables in it.
Took out a lot of local bars and restaurants as collateral damage. Guy had speakers playing loud warnings which kept the injuries thankfully low.
I recall that incident. 🏢 I'd call that more civil unrest or some nutcase making a statement rather than straight domestic terror. It was odd that it took place around Xmas. Kinda like Die Hard 1988. 🏢
Oh god. I worked in an AT&T store in north AL at the time. Worst day to work ever. I would’ve called in if I had known .
When this building was constructed almost all telephones in use were connected by copper wires. Calls were routed through massive electro-mechanical switches. That's why the ceilings are so high and the building requires so much ventilation. That old equipment took up a lot of space and generated a lot of heat. Soon after this structure was completed the mechanical switches were replaced with fully electronic equipment that took up much less space. Today most phones are cellular but that doesn't mean there are no 'wires'. When someone makes a cellular call..text, whatever...the signal is transmitted to a nearby cell-site. The cell-site is connected to switching equipment via fiber optic cables. The calls still need to be processed and routed but now instead of tens of thousands of 'twisted pairs' running into a switching facility there are only a few fiber optic cables that flow massive amounts of data to machines that take up a fraction of the space that was needed for the old mechanical gear. I'm sure that building still houses tel-com equipment, but it probably only takes up a small part of the build. The the question begs: What's the rest of the space being used for?
Telco hotel. Routers and servers. Meet-me rooms.
I worked for the phone company in NYC from the '90s to 2010. I've been in this building plenty of times. You are correct, there was a lot of empty space where large analog equipment used to be. But they had floors and rooms that were locked out. Meaning you had no access for any reason. Nobody seemed to work there except for security personnel. Everyone else was there to do a job and then leave. The whole vibe was, do your work, don't ask questions, and leave.
That seems really weird! @@21jimmyo
I've seen that building In person one time by accident. I was in the subway system when I had to get out at a different stop than I planned. I walked around a minute to get a bearing. I pulled my phone out to check how far off I was from where I was going. I had a feeling I was standing next to something weird. I'm in lower Manhattan and there weren't any ground level windows next to me. I look at the building 8 feet to my right and just followed a windowless wall straight up into the sky. I just froze looking up. It was creepy...
During September 11th 2001 when I worked there Simon you’re mostly right. Some of us called it the bunker or the cage. 3 inches of rebar at the base is what I was told the building was anchored to. I was on the 24th floor for over 2 years. There’s at least 4 ways to enter without being seen. Your videos are amazingly accurate.
I don't believe you at all
@@THE-X-Forcewhy the hell would someone lie about something so weird lmao don't think they care if you believe them or not
@@Funko777 I don't care either .. and if you don't know that people lie about literally everything in comments here then all I can say is welcome to RUclips.
and lets not forget the Faraday Cage.....
@@mlfett6307 It's best to forget them. Everyone thinks Nicholas is teh crazy one in the Coppola family, but you've never met his brother, hence the high security containment building built for him to live in.
I live in New York City, born and raised. I never knew about this building until now. This reminds me of the building that the Nazis used in The Man in the High Castle series.
Except, the Nazis didn't let their subway stations become infested with drug addicted criminals.
@@petebondurant58 Cause Americans elite are nothing more than wannabe Nazis. They try so hard to copy them and have a charisma like them but fail miserably
Yeah, I grew up right outside of NYC and this is my first time hearing about any of this. It looks so familiar though...
Tom Hanks or some celeb made a fuss over this bldg 🏢
@@petebondurant58 The Nazi's were drug addicted criminals.
I'm convinced that Simon has the same size building (and similar equipment) to produce and make all the videos and run all his channels.
🤣😂
He did used to say he had a Prince of Persia-like basement. This would fit the bill.
This is interesting, because the "room" he films these videos in seems a bit more mundane "home office", or "loft space" like, as opposed to "fortress of solitude".
hehahe
It may be difficult to believe, but once upon a time connecting a phone call required actual machines designed to physically connect wires together, and the volume of calls from one heavily populated area to another required really large buildings to house all of that automated machinery.
Over time, the size of the connecting machinery shrank until you reach the modern router which is about the size of a ham sandwich and does about 95% of the connecting work all by itself.
It really makes me wonder how much of it is still occupied. I have seen exchanges that are mostly empty now, the only reason they still exist in the property they are in is because they have access to the cables. They keep downsizing as tech gets better and better. Most could be knocked down and replaced with something the size of a small garden shed.
They probably use it as a data centre, with a few upgrades it should be ideal.
Ok, so the bit about trade workers being denied access to certain rooms or information about what's inside *could* indicate covert espionage activity. But as the operator of a massive data network, you'd be kinda protective of it to extent of assuming anyone not thoroughly vetted to be a potential bad actor, and not only deny physical access to critical elements but also not leak any information on what those elements are or do, lest that information guide a subsequent attempt at infiltration. Should come as no surprise that a facility like that is being used for espionage, but it still needs to be aggressively defended against threats to its benign purpose.
Even a tiny network or tiny cloud computer operator simply doesn't give non-essential access to machine rooms. I worked in a minor branch office of a minor bank and only 4 people had access to the machine room, along with the vendors that absolutely had to be there. I took tours every 3 months as I was the head IT guy and wanted to be able to report that I didn't see any problems in there.
There is no objective proof that it is being used by the NSA however it wouldn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t care either way, they aren’t interested in you or I they are interested in terrorists, foreign adversaries communications, counter intelligence, etc and it’s not in our best interest to be against that. I think we should be happy that others are doing this on our behalf for the sake of our national security. Their work is much less glamorous and inherently clandestine so they get no recognition yet their role is critical.
That last photo of the building reminds me of Steely Dan's album The Royal Scam.
I did installation work in this building in October 2000. It was then, as it is now, a telco switching center and a data center. :)
There's a few of these buildings around. Another in NYC, is 60 Hudson Street. In London, Telehouse West on Coriander Avenue.
I've worked in most of those. Some of the early ones were just part of the way computing has shrunk. So Telehouse was originally built as a computer centre for a bank, they didn't need all the space so leased out space. ISPs leased that and installed their kit in private or shared rooms. Security is strict because a lot of data flows through those buildings and there would be a lot of disruption if people unplugged the wrong thing.
We have two Sasktel data centers, one in downtown Regina and one in north industrial Saskatoon. Camera's everywhere, security fencing etc, 2-3 huge generators installed (as you can see the louvers and exhaust out the side), with massive fuel tanks for backup.
Sasktel was the pioneer of fiber optics in telecommunications, and during the cold war, the Regina Sasktel buildings basement housed the backup systems for NORAD. Regina was a possible target by USSR because of that.
😉
0:45 - Batman must hang out here at times 😅
Reminds one of the “Oldest House” from the Control videogame.
ruclips.net/video/7n7ylXPueYE/видео.htmlsi=P6pyc29FEdAAaw3_
Oh wow did you see the picture at exactly 12:47 of what looks like rows and rows of barrels? Those are all batteries!! I was in the business cell phone construction side and I worked at a mountain top facility and it also had rows and rows of batteries exactly like these in fact they were AT&T. All I'm getting at is they are so old and massive. I wonder how they will be safely disposed of? They weigh 100's of pounds each.
If they're the old lead-acid type, probably just like any other car battery
I suspect 20 year old single malt Scotch to while away the hours after a strike. Wondering if your family is dead, etc.
On a more serious note, why barrels? Cylindrical batteries are space inefficient.
I once had someone's home made grappa while working in such a building in Italy.
We have a windowless building in Anniston, AL and it is a AT&T building. it is connected to an older AT&T building but the public can't access the building. It located at 1316 Noble Street and the windowless building can be seen at 26 E 14th Street, Anniston, AL. There is also abandoned ATM machine building located at 1205 Leighton Ave, Anniston, AL. The property is supposedly owned by the nearby Baptist church but no one uses it and its covered partially by a parking lot. A little strange; don't you think.
> the public can't access the building
I can't think of a single office building where the public can go wherever they want, except for buildings where offices are just one room for a 1-3 people.
I visited NY last in 2011, and remember passing by this building. It made an impression, that windowless building. I couldn't guess why it was built that way.
I've been inside ATT switch gear buildings. All I ever saw was Buildings full of Batteries and Switch Gear. Never saw a single person. Not even an office for anyone.
In Hartford, there's a former AT&T building (now owned by Frontier) and again it is windowless and is still full of batteries along with switchgear. There was a fire in the building last year where some of the batteries or wiring caught fire.
Another reason for not having windows is probably to help carry the load of all those batteries.
Our landlines were all connected to CO's. Central Offices in cities. Every CO handled certain phone prefixes, which is why said prefixes were only in certain geographic areas. They handled all the local switching and had generators to run for days. Often natural gas.
If one had buried utilities to the CO, you had phone service through natural disasters. I talked to my brother during the infamous Hurricane Andrew in Miami, and many years later a daughter during Hurricane Ike in Houston. Those days are gone as no phone company is providing copper lines anymore.
I lived across from one in Denver, it was rather nice because they had their own small parking lot for the few employees instead of a big condo conversion with lots of residents looking for parking, partying, etc.
Oof, hearing 'The Intercept' almost had me tuning out immediately. At least they're consistent, predictably pointing out the obvious while omitting the relevant. Love to all
There’s a reason US carriers requested indemnity from breaking Constitutional law and received it in perpetuity in the flurry of lawmaking after 9/11.
Interesting. I worked for AT&T for 28 years, most of that time was spent in buildings like these. They’re everywhere in cities over 100,000 people, and the bigger the city the taller these buildings were. It was a fun job, but much more mundane than alleged here.
My dad worked there for many years. He never thought anything weird was going on.
The steam workers not being able to go into certain areas is completely normal for a central office.
I lived for 16 years only a few blocks away, and it was always uneasy when I was standing around outside of there, walking my dog, sitting down to eat or whatever. I was absolutely certain there was a snipers’ rifle pointed at me.
The use of tall buildings like this for telephone hubs and intercept stations is likely related to the fact that that prior to fiber optic cables AT&T operated a network of line-of-sight microwave relay stations.
I lived in Kensington, MD in the mid-1970s when a similar tall windowless building was constructed just north of the I-495 DC Beltway and there was speculation it was some secret spy facility or missile silo but it turned out to be something even scarier, a Mormon Temple 😂
haha!! The boring Magic Kingdom... Always a mystery to me how best to get there from i-495... Connecticut ave or Beach drive/ Rock Creek Pwy. Then again i'm not part of the LDS, so never bothered to find out.
We have pretty much the SAME EXACT building in Massachusetts and its a AT&T building in Worcester looks exactly like that. Plus they will not let you in there NO MATTER what. They have the intercom and it takes seriously 10to 15 minutes for anyone to get to the door and when they open it you cant see anything inside the building from the door.
I honestly thought that was the building Im talking about the second I seen it on this video. I sis Electrical work and they made me have a back round check to be able to get in to the building back in the 90s. It has its own self-sufficient living facilities and engines to run everything inside it. The things crazy and idk if its still owned by At&T or not anymore but its just exactly like this one. They said similar things about the nukeclear bomb stuff about it as well. This thing can take a hit and still be there basically.
The building has 33 floors in the tall building. The thing is 617 feet tall and I'm telling you not much difference n the looks. They said similar things about the one in Worcester that he said in thie video about spying stuff. But seriously no Lie look it up 421 Grove st Worcester,MA I'm sure there's some way like google earth or someway to be able to see it.
Wow, that place looks secure!
I find this incredibly reassuring
holy hell!! you did a video on my favorite skyscraper!!
Good night from Papua New Guinea. I enjoyed watching your contents
Shhhh! Elvis stays here!
Yup! His apartment is between Jimmy Hoffa and this weird chap with a funny mustache and a German accent.
Thank you for the positive intro of my city, not perfect but definitely unique
It's the Tyrrell Corporation..."More Human Than Human."
isn’t this the building where Control takes place?
Maxwell Smart?
Looks like the men in Black building!
KAOS
@JimAllen-Persona the oldest house is in New York
Certainly looks like the same building, as the story was braking when the game was in development would not surprise me if the development team said yes that's a spooky government agency looking building let's copy that with a few changes to avoid copyright
OH MY! The Federal Bureau of Control is real!
That game is so fucking good.
the oldest house's address is 34 thomas street.
@@EmpyreanFrostand yet Alan Wake 2 was such garbo in comparison. Hopefully Control 2 will be as good as the original though I doubt it. The Alan Wake crossover crap was horrible
The AT&T building in San Francisco with the NSA gear is at the corner of 2nd and Folsom. With so many international fibers it's probably not as useful as it used to be.
It’s a hub for AT&Ts fiber network.
There were similar, smaller AT&T facilities across the US, also with off-limits areas. AT&Ts partners had a lot of presence. Things have changed. The increasing capacity of fiber optic lines and improvements in computing power has allowed both AT&T and their unnamed partners to relocate much of the actual work to central headquarters instead of using these old faclities directly. That is, they still gather sigint but the work is now done back at home base and these high security buildings are a lot emptier than they once were. AT&T has totally decommissioned some of their facilities like this and left them as empty rooms or with racks of derelict call switching gear, long ago turned off. It's all done remotely now.
nevermind 33 Thomas Street. I want to know what that Jenga-looking building to the left is at 3:39 !
Very expensive apartments.
Why would a pipefitter be allowed to go into any room they weren't working in anyways?
OMFG Simon ... "an unidentified steamfitter" was denied full access to the worlds leading telecommunication company's technology site. Holy shit, that's it! It must be something nefarious.
Nice job on the MGS exclamation sound effect.. metal gear for the win
My mother retired from that building.. Built to withstand a nuclear war hit as all the phone data processing is in it..
It's been known for years that the Russian embassy's residence in Riverdale New York City is a listening post for their foreign intelligence service. The building was built one floor at a time and raised into position. It's called suspended street floor construction.
11:48 how to lose your job in 2s - the spokesman edition 😅😂😂😂
A nice hideout for a zombie apocalypse I see, A well fortified and supplied building, only thing is humans are more treacherous than the undead, at least you know a zombies sole intention.
33 Thomas knows you, Simon, and it nods and smiles.
I do Data Center HVAC and every city in the world has one of these. I've even worked at this one....I didn't see the whole building of course, but I do know that 90% of the real estate at 33 Thomas is AT and T servers.😎
It’s watching you Simon. And the drives are filling up quick.
13:49 That is all standard practice in any secure building. Any area some random idiot contractor could get lost or wander into, could very easily be infiltrated by a bad actor. Spend any time in Gov't/Defense, Telecom, Finance, Critical infrastructure and it becomes very common place. Why do you think everyone is wearing badges and there are hand geometry, iris, fingerprint readers with cameras over head all over?
I worked in the area soon after this monolith was built. A strange and menacing monolith rising above lower Manhattan.
We have a similar at&t building in Sacramento too, always so spooky
Social media is a two way mirror w everyone should know this.
It's still there. Watching. Listening. Paying attention to.. YOU
And?
It’s the Oldest House.
*Such a clever idea...a spy hub disguised as a very notorious windowless massive skyscrapper in the mid of NY*
Hey simon, putting this here because I assume new videos are more closely monitored - Atoms For Peace project video! All the mad stuff that was considered and anything that ever went beyond the drawing board
Been there several times doing telecom surveys for AT&T. Just a couple blocks north from the WTC memorial.
you have to wonder how much of that building is empty. This was built in the days of analog switches were racks of relay-type mechanical switches. Now everything is digital. I would imagine a lot of those analog switches replaced with racks of internet routers instead. Still, the tech has gotten a lot smaller. Who knows, maybe it still has entire floors filled with decommissioned switches?
I imagine a lot of the space that used to be taken up by switches now holds datacenter servers, this building would be an ideal place for one.
@@JeffDeWitt I don’t know if they could get enough power in that building for a data center. Also, I don’t think it’s on a internet trunk line, where data center prefer to be.
Could be filled with as many UPS batteries as the floors can load to maximize uptime if the whole city goes dark again
Yeah I was wondering that but might be difficult to put in loads of new tech as I imagine the cooling would have to be really upgraded. Wont be quite rows and rows of Strowgers but bet there are empty racks...
@@simoncolenutt5228 No doubt the building was bult with some big freight elevators and cooling can be upgraded. It's worth spending money for a big data center.
Over in South Bend, Indiana, Studebaker built a VERY solid factory building a century ago. Right next to it is a railroad which also has in its right of way one of the major fiber optic trunk lines that carries vast amount of internet traffic.
That century old Studebaker building was rebuilt and now, among other things, has a big data center with as good Internet access as anywhere in the world.
There’s an AT&T windowless building in Charleston, WV too
hadabuddy comment.
i had a buddy who told me about this place. he had to go in there in the late 80s early 90s when the internet went ballistic.
he said getting into the place when the sun was up was no problem.
after the sun went down in that part of town, it didn't matter how secure it was inside, the taxi driver would be his lookout and give him the "coast is clear" to run from the taxi to the entrance without getting robbed/mugged.
I remember the telephone exchange building in the village near to us in the 70’s……housing the switchgear for old rotary dial phones.
The HAI video is good too
I have a suggestion for a video (which you've probably already done). How about a video on technological advancements of war, and how modern wars like Ukraine may influence the future.
I hope this park will be fine in the long run.
Ya ! I always wondered what that building was.
Petition for “complete history of fighter/military aircraft” vid
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if i didn't just put myself on a watchlist watching this video, i probably did by looking at the building on google earth LOL
0:27 - - wtc
12:34 - - int pix - - 12:37 - - storage pix
12:43 - - telephone switching equipment
12:47 - - backup-bat
12:58 - - backup-bat
13:03 - - drives (size of wash machines)
13:46 - - tech room
14:36 - - near wtc - - 14:37
14:38 - - looking uptown
I'd just love to be a Finnish janitor in this building
Look at that magnificent beard
I've seen this building before. In my dreams. How is that possible? It's the oldest house
You should do a video on the “five eyes”.
Interesting... Norfolk Va has a similar building
Whip and also nee nee ... yes Simon...yes 🤣
Control. Oviously The Oldest House.
AT&T long distance switch buildings exist in every decent size city in America.
I used to work there. It’s not that interesting. It’s full of electronics that need cooling.
There's an AT&T marked bullding near where I work. It must also be a data center, since only two faces have any windows, and they look rather small.
Try times square during a Super Bowl..🤯 Only thing close I've experienced was Mardi Gras in New Orleans following Katrina. Freaking epic on both accounts.
I live just a few blocks from AT&T's windowless building in New Orleans, makes me wonder how many of these data centers there are around the country and everything that goes on inside them. I never see anyone go inside, there's one column of windows along one side, 2 doors, and some vents, that's it.
The news media was discussing this building and its use by intelligence agencies as long ago as the 1980's. Seriously; I can remember reading about this place that long ago.
2 weeks of supplies in case of nuclear fallout.
What a relief!
SBC /AT&T building downtown Fort Worth has that barren look.
I’m from New York and I hate that city. The further you get from that corner of the state the better life is.
A place of power, like The Oldest House.