We built a secret apartment in the mall (2007) | Hacker News Reader

We built a secret apartment in the mall (2007)

trummerkind.com

172 pointsaidangrimshaw57 comments

I worked in the Providence Place Mall as a retail employee when the secret apartment was discovered in the parking garage. The mall has an interesting network of back hallways. The facades of the public area ended when you entered one, replaced with concrete and exposed iron beams, with odd nooks and crannies.

When the apartment was discovered the police considered it a legitimate public safety threat, but in the following days Michael Townsend's statements around his intentions transformed the narrative. People were fascinated with the secret apartment, and Townsend spared no detail to quench their curiosity. He faced serious criminal trespassing charges, but I think his apologetic transparency, and the artsy culture of Providence, were influential in the lenient consequences he ultimately received.

Townsend is still an active artist in Providence[1], with his secret apartment now Providence folklore. He is still banned from entering the mall to this day.

99% Invisible did a great episode on it[2].

[1] https://tapeart.com/ [2] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/

"The prosecution rattled through a laundry list of offenses. But the judge didn’t seem too impressed by the charges — if anything, he appeared more impressed by the audacity of the secret apartment dwellers. So he gave Townsend a misdemeanor for trespassing and sent him on his way. Townsend, who had lived on and off in the secret apartment for nearly 4 years, got away with a slap on the wrist"

if anyone was wondering what punishment he got

It's amazing how disparate treatment by the criminal justice system can be, depending on whether a judge is capable of being (and decides to be) be sympathetic/empathetic to the wrong-doer, curious about them, decides to basically view them as a human being. A lot of people don't get that "privilege". (And to be sure, I think everybody should, not that nobody should).

What about Chuck Mangione living in the Megalo Mart on King of the Hill? Malcolm in the Middle also had an episode where a guy was living in the store for years without being detected.

https://kingofthehill.fandom.com/wiki/Chuck_Mangione

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_in_the_Middle

@vgeek If you have more information about the episode I would appreciate that.

https://kingofthehill.fandom.com/wiki/Megalo_Dale - this is probably one of the top 10 episodes of the series, so if you haven't seen the show before, it is a great introduction.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0640296/ - not much of a synopsis here, but enough to track down the episode. The guy helps clean and saves one of the characters during his stay between the aisle shelves.

In 2003, while I was studying in a cinema college program, me and my friends gained access to the maintenance corridors between the walls of the school in order to make an horror movie. We discovered a large unused area with a table, a couch, a television powered on and directly connected to a single hidden camera pointing at the corridor on the other side of the wall, but not recording.

We went back the next year and everything was still in place, the TV powered on, but everything covered with dust.

I assume someone (a lazy employee?) was using this place to relax, but wanted to check if someone was coming up. Maybe that employee was fired without anyone ever discovering his hidden refuge.

Townsend (the artist) was ultimately caught, but I figure there must be thousand of these hidden spaces scattered in every big buildings, and we will never hear about them.

> but I figure there must be thousand of these hidden spaces scattered in every big buildings, and we will never hear about them.

Most likely. This story reminds me that as a kid in the 90's we figured out that the walls under the bottom floor of every building in the neighborhood led to a hollow space big enough to be called a small room.

It didn't take long for most blocks to have a hole in them with a sheet of plywood to hide the easy access.

I was lucky that the one in my friend's block was mostly occupied by other kids and had pastel drawings on all the walls. Rumor had it that some of the other blocks were used for less reputable reasons.

I always wondered what happened to those spaces. I tried to go there once, but the buildings now have locked doors.

Had we been adults, it would have been very easy to add furniture and perhaps even electricity.

There is a fantastic Michael Chabon book _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay_ which has a similar space carved out of the Empire State Building.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Adventures_of_Kava...

Also a Goosebumps book where the kids discover someone living in their school like this.

> Townsend (the artist) was ultimately caught, but I figure there must be thousand of these hidden spaces scattered in every big buildings

Look up the term "phrogging". There's a whole culture of people dedicated to living undetected in places where they're not supposed to.

That TV has a bad case of burn in by now.

Thousands - or more. Was working at a plant when a "lounge" was discovered in a void behind a row of workers lockers. Someone had figured out the space behind the lockers was empty - and rather large - so they removed the back of on of them and turned it into a secret room.

I'll be stuff like that is all over the place.

When I was a child, I had dreams about an almost inaccessible room in the family home. Then when I was 10, I went for a drafting Merit Badge in the Cub Scouts, and plotted the floor plan of our house. Assuming standard Euclidean Geometry, no, there isn't a hidden room.

But now I keep reading about secret servants' passages in stately homes, hotels, and the like.

someone (a lazy employee?) was using this place to relax

This sort of thing happens more often than most people relize. The maintenance staff at 311 South Wacker in Chicago set up a makeshift basketball court in the empty mechanical space on the 69th floor.

https://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/building.php?id=1055

Paris has the Catacombs. A very small part is opened to the public as a museum, but most of the area is the territory of underground explorers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris

As a HVAC controls technician that routinely explores mechanical and other spaces of commercial structures; YES there is a LOT of under utilized space within those building envelopes. You will quite often see janitors and other permeant building personnel build those spaces out with furniture, mini fridge, microwave, TV's etc etc.

I believe the mall in Natic MA has apartments at the mall. If you are into mall shopping and browsing it could be a real plus.

This story could use a bit more context. It sounds like it's a response to a question we don't know. I understand that a shopping mall was built, someone noticed a storage space that was unused, managed to access it (was it unlocked?) and secretly turned it into an almost-livable home (no plumbing is a bit a problem, though). Managed to get away with it for 4 years, and then was caught, arrested and released.

So what happened after that? Was everything thrown out again? Did anyone find a use for that space? And how did you think you were going to get plumbing in there?

Just wait for the movie :)

Straight out of Compton, part 2: out of the mall

Not even a storage space. A weird essentially unusable wasted void.

I like the ambiguous Ballardian language of reverence towards the mall and its staff. It's charming and also a little creepy.

I thought that was a little odd too, his saccharine descriptions of the security staff and the mall were a little off putting and I couldn't tell if they were genuine or just trying to shape a narrative.

I'm pretty sure it's sarcastic, at least in places:

> It is important to me that you know that I have a great deal of respect for the work you do and I am very sorry that I wasted some of your valuable time today. This project is in no way a critique on security or what defines safety in contemporary society.

Though I think there's also an undercurrent of fellow-feeling for the actual in-the-flesh human beings who do that job, who don't exactly bear the blame for 'what defines safety in contemporary society' or anything like that. (In that, you know, the policeman is playing a part precisely as much as the prisoner is.)

I get the sense he may be a bit mentally unsure of the line he's drawing between respecting the workers and disrespecting their work.

I think we was trying to avoid getting the security staff in trouble for failing to find his secret apartment under their noses for four years.

You might be subconsciously picking up on the fact that it's actually really creepy to build an apartment in a building you don't own.

I suspect the artist comes from the r/antiwork fringe, who would say it's equally creepy to build an apartment in a building you do own.

(I don't know how I feel about all that, really. I don't regard myself as a capitalist drone who thinks that someone like Elon Musk deserves to be richer than a heart surgeon. Jeff Bezos maybe, but, well, suffice it to say I understand the market is not perfect. But I also can't bring myself to think that it's more entitled - in the character-trait sense - to claim ownership to something I built myself, than to claim ownership to the fruit of other people's work, which latter claim is pretty much what the r/antiwork crowd are making. It's a messy argument to say the least...)

Someone owning a space that they will never ever set eyes on, that someone else could make use of without disrupting -- or even notifying -- anyone else, especially perhaps the "owner," certainly calls into question the entire concept of "owning a space."

If they were legally able to rent out that space, I'm pretty sure they would. So I don't think it "calls into question the concept of owning a space", so much as it calls into question the wisdom of legislating a 'minimum quality' for dwellings.

Specifically, it should force us to ask whether such laws (a) drive up the quality of properties, or rather (b) merely make it impossible to rent a property in the price range someone might pay for this mall apartment.

I can't see how any serious-minded person could ask "Is the entire concept of property a bad idea, because someone can't rent a dingy apartment in a Rhode Island mall?". Of course the answer to that question is 'no'.

Not that "owning a space shouldn't exist," but we should clarify and question "owning a space," because we casually and colloquially believe/accept "property" incorrectly.

Our minds just generally go to the 3 year old's conception of property, "Its mine and I can do whatever I want."

But, of course, no. "Property" for grownups is a jumble of rights AND responsibilities.

It's good to question those, especially when it gets to what might be absurdities, e.g. Ted Turner owning a literal U.S. state's worth of land.

It may make more sense in the context of his successful attempt to avoid going to prison or otherwise get a severe punishment.

I don't think it's sarcastic exactly, or feigned, I think he genuinely respected the working people on the security staff, and didn't mean them or the mall any harm. (I'm not sure I believe he genuinely respected the mall and its owners in an unfeigned way). But, yeah, the choice to emphasize that in his narrative seems probably affected by his hope to avoid going to jail.

A couple of years ago some art school students built an apartment in a Berlin subway tunnel. Some years later another artist built a little penthouse unnoticed on the roof of an apartment building. I went to visit it after I found it listed on real estate website. It turned out to be sort of a mock real estate agent pitch performance. Later the artist told me that all renters, neighbors and janitors though it must be legitimate and nobody suspected it to be built without permission from authorities or the owner.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-11/photos-a-...

https://penthaus-a-la-parasit.de/

Owning beehives was illegal in NYC until a decade or so ago and around the time the law was repealed a bunch of clandestine beekeepers came forward and confessed how they had hidden their hives.

One guy had disguised his hives as an AC condenser on the roof. He even went so far as to wear workman's clothing when he went up to work on it, so any neighbors who were only passingly curious would see a tradesman and ignore what he was actually doing.

This is why I disagree with recreational lawmaking. If you employ a bunch of people whose only job is to make laws, you soon end up with a bunch of absurd laws like this, just because someone got stung by a bee once and a politician decided it would make for a handy Facebook ad in their next campaign. And before you know it, you can't move a finger without breaking one of the ten million laws that govern your every action. No one wants this and yet somehow we've ended up with it.

I just moved into this place with large unused voids on the second floor. I suppose they're attic spaces by definition, but there's also a third floor called an attic. An electrician had to break open the walls to run wire in them, and I've kept then unsealed as I'm thinking of creating false walls for ultra-secret storage area. One of the voids is tall enough to stand in. However I'm not sure if the floor is load bearing or not. Coincidentally I had just watched Parasite before discovering the spaces. That did not help the new place jitters I tend to get.

When my mother built my childhood home she discovered large voids on the building plan. She had them lined with concrete blocks and fronted with a bookshelf. Later the movie Safe Room came out and I realized we sort of had that, but far cooler.

Link to a 99pi podcast episode about this secret mall apartmen in case anyone is interested in the story.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/

Less than a mile away is the circa 1825 Providence Arcade, which is the oldest indoor shopping mall in the country. A few years ago they remodeled the entire second level into tiny apartments. It’s not just a floor of an apartment building that happens to be above a mall— the entrances to their apartments and stores are all in the same big room. The second-floor balcony above the main shopping area forms their collective front porch. It really would be like living in the mall. What a strange experience that must be.

It really is a beautiful building, though. Scroll down a smidge for the gallery.

https://www.arcadeprovidence.com

I had a friend in college who was an admin for a computer lab in an honors dorm. Because he was an admin, he had unfettered access to the dorm even in summer. There was a sizable closet attached to the lab so he moved in. Since he was squatting in a dorm, he had access to bathrooms, showers, etc. Eventually, he was discovered by campus security for playing music too loud, and was promptly kicked out of his squatting space.

Video link incase you are using a modern browser: http://www.trummerkind.com/mall/Media/trummerkind-websized.m...

Shows a little bit more of the space, but not much. This came up a few days ago IIRC - a floorplan would be so so useful to get an idea of the layout and location!

The person who did this made a fake website for the building, including the floorplan :)

http://trummerkind.com/theone/04-Floor_Plans.html

This is fascinating. A nuanced picture is painted in only a few sentences:

> The Apartment in the Mall was never intended to be specifically an ‘art’ piece, it was a home, an escape and an oasis away from a significant task that was consuming my life at the time.

>The 500 portraits, and their corresponding web pages took over five years to finish. It involved over 30,000 hours of computer time making the website and was completely unfunded.

I can’t imagine going through all that and doing all that work for an unfunded project. Combined with the story of the mall apartment, it makes me think this person is unwell, but who am I to judge? I am truly fascinated.

> I can’t imagine [...] doing all that work for an unfunded project. [...] it makes me think this person is unwell.

who really is unwell here ? humans are the only creatures on earth who accept to pay for drinking water.

We're also the only creatures that have plumbing, water treatment, and access to water without competition or scarcity (with obvious exception). Not really sure what the point is here.

humans are the only creatures on earth who ... have money, except for a bird who learned to exchange it for treats. https://gfycat.com/scholarlythirstyfallowdeer

> it makes me think this person is unwell

It seems that he and you just have dramatically different sets of values and perceptions of the world. A person who intentionally seeks to find the edge cases in their culture might behave like someone with a mental illness. And historically cultures do have a tendency to define such people as "ill". But the similarity is on the surface; the intentions and motivations are completely different.

They probably would have gotten away with it longer had they put some kind of sound-proofing and “airlock” type entrance. From the video I note it’s a standard door and wall. Anyone walking by would have heard voices inside.

Sep 24, 2020: NY transit workers created an underground 'man cave' in Grand Central to 'get drunk and party,' MTA says

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-transit-workers-mta...

I'm definitely a fan of the Squatting. The current cyberactivist is due to a lot of Hackalabs in a squatter houses.

On the topic of living in retail spaces: A lot of the large department stores built between 1890 and 1960 had one or two apartments in the upper floors. They were almost never advertised, and given or rented either to store executives or high-profile customers. The Foley's in downtown Houston was one.

On the topic of living places you're not supposed to: In the mid-2000's, a homeless guy built a basic apartment inside the Lake Shore Drive bridge in Chicago. He even tapped into the bridge's electrical system and had a TV to watch baseball games on. The most interesting part is that the LSD bridge is a draw bridge, and opens and closes several times a day in the summer.

"The Hope Project" 9/11 memorial project he talks about at the bottom, the link to the documentation page for it seems to be no longer online?

There's a little bit preserved in internet archvie, but it isn't very complete, and I still don't have a very good idea of what it actually was. I wonder why it's not up anymore.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160902145942/http://www.tapear...

There was a similar story some years ago about a person or a group of people who built a secret room in a parking garage out of cinderblocks and painted to look like part of the facility. Can't find it.

This reminds me of something I saw on social media a few years ago. I’m fairly sure it was a “LARP”, but not 100% because I don’t recall digging into it at all.

Basically, some guy had built a tiny apartment inside a sculpture in a city. I want to say it was in NYC, but I’m not sure. The biggest thing I recall is that it wasn’t big enough to stand in, and there was a guitar hanging from the “ceiling” that he played in a video at one point.

A similar project in Copenhagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3GV2ZLHDI

TV coverage (1/2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTMK14w2u88

We had something like this in a Philadephia sports stadium as well: https://www.inquirer.com/news/the-secret-apartment-vet-stadi...

I remember a story of a student that built a small home for himself at school, beneath some stairs.

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