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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>99% Invisible did a great episode on it[2].<p>[1] <a href="https://tapeart.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tapeart.com/</a>
[2] <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/" rel="nofollow">https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/</a>
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.<p>We went back the next year and everything was still in place, the TV powered on, but everything covered with dust.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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?
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.<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-11/photos-a-secret-apartment-was-just-found-in-a-berlin-subway-tunnel" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-11/photos-a-...</a><p><a href="https://penthaus-a-la-parasit.de/" rel="nofollow">https://penthaus-a-la-parasit.de/</a>
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.
Link to a 99pi podcast episode about this secret mall apartmen in case anyone is interested in the story.<p><a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/" rel="nofollow">https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/</a>
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.
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: <a href="http://www.trummerkind.com/mall/Media/trummerkind-websized.mov" rel="nofollow">http://www.trummerkind.com/mall/Media/trummerkind-websized.m...</a><p>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!
This is fascinating. A nuanced picture is painted in only a few sentences:<p>> 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.<p>>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.<p>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.
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<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-transit-workers-mta-hidden-man-cave-grand-central-2020-9?op=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-transit-workers-mta...</a>
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.<p>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?<p>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.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160902145942/http://www.tapeart.com/hope" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20160902145942/http://www.tapear...</a>
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 <i>fairly</i> sure it was a “LARP”, but not 100% because I don’t recall digging into it at all.<p>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: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3GV2ZLHDI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3GV2ZLHDI</a><p>TV coverage (1/2): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTMK14w2u88" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTMK14w2u88</a>
We had something like this in a Philadephia sports stadium as well: <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/the-secret-apartment-vet-stadium-20210309.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.inquirer.com/news/the-secret-apartment-vet-stadi...</a>