Walk down Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights and you might pass 58 without a second glance. The Greek Revival townhouse, built in 1847. It looks like any other on the tree-lined block. Brownstone facade, front stoop, and tall windows. Look closer, though, and something seems off. The windows are permanently black. The door appears industrial. No curtains hang inside, no plants sit on windowsills, and no mail accumulates in the box.
That’s because 58 Joralemon Street isn’t a house at all. It’s a subway ventilation shaft and emergency exit. Its residential exterior is a carefully maintained disguise. The building represents New York’s most elaborate genre of architectural deception. The fake facade is designed to hide critical infrastructure behind a mask of urban normalcy.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company purchased the property in 1907 while constructing the tunnel that would carry subway trains beneath the East River to Manhattan. Engineers needed ventilation shafts on both sides of the river to maintain air quality in the tube. Rather than build an obvious industrial structure in the middle of a prestigious residential block, they gutted the existing townhouse. They converted it into a ventilation building while preserving and maintaining the original facade.
The Brooklyn Heights Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated the structure as a historic building. This obligates the MTA to preserve its Greek Revival exterior. The agency renovated the facade in 1999, updating the ventilation machinery inside while ensuring the outside remained unchanged from its neighbors. The brownstone’s original owner was Patrick Brennan. He purchased it in 1883 and raised his family there. He would likely not recognize the interior. It is now filled with massive fans and emergency stairways. But he would find the exterior unchanged.
Judy Scofield Miller lived next door at 60 Joralemon Street with her husband and children. She reported that the ventilation equipment wasn’t entirely silent. Every few weeks, the sound of whirling fan blades would disrupt their quiet living room. But the mild inconvenience didn’t prevent the neighboring property from listing for nearly $6 million in 2022.
Manhattan has its own collection of fake buildings, though none as architecturally distinguished as 58 Joralemon. At 415 Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, a row of townhouse facades conceals an electrical substation for Con Edison. The facades are complete with windows, doors, and balconies. Designed by the Switzer Group, an interior design firm, the facades were specifically created to appease neighbors who objected to having industrial infrastructure in their residential area.
Near Greenwich Village, the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue at Mulry Square required similar treatment. The MTA’s emergency ventilation plant for the subway tunnels below is hidden behind a facade. It is designed to blend with the surrounding historic buildings. Community groups and the Landmarks Preservation Commission debated the appropriate design. They ultimately selected an option that echoed the neighborhood’s 19th-century character.
The fake building phenomenon isn’t unique to transit infrastructure. Throughout Manhattan, windowless concrete structures hide telephone switching equipment, Con Edison substations, and other utilities. These require substantial physical plant but would mar the streetscape if honestly expressed. Some of these buildings date to the Cold War era, when critical communications infrastructure was deliberately hardened against attack, and disguised against discovery.
Similar architectural deceptions exist worldwide. In London, 23-24 Leinster Gardens presents a five-story Victorian facade. It conceals an open gap where the Metropolitan Line subway needs to vent steam. In Paris, 145 Rue Lafayette hides a Metro ventilation chimney behind a Haussmann-style facade. Toronto Hydro has constructed suburban-style “houses” throughout residential neighborhoods that actually contain electrical substations.
The logic is consistent: infrastructure must exist, but it needn’t announce itself. In cities where property values depend on streetscape quality and historic preservation, disguising industrial buildings as residential ones protects both aesthetics and real estate prices. The fake facades cost more to build and maintain than honest industrial structures, but the alternative of exposed machinery amid brownstones is considered unacceptable.
Not all fake buildings serve transit functions. At 103 Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side, what appears to be the rear entrance to “Lower East Side Toys” is actually the entrance to The Back Room. It’s a speakeasy-style bar. The establishment deliberately cultivates confusion. It uses the toy store facade to maintain the illusion of a hidden establishment.
Crif Dogs on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village takes the concept further. A phone booth inside the hot dog restaurant conceals a secret door. Call the number and give the password, and you’ll be admitted to PDT (Please Don’t Tell). It’s a craft cocktail bar. The establishment can only be accessed through the phone booth entrance. This turns architectural deception into marketing strategy.
These playful fakes differ fundamentally from the infrastructure disguises. The speakeasies want to be discovered, and their secrecy is performance. The subway vents want to be invisible but their deception is purely functional. Both, however, reflect Manhattan’s particular relationship with facades. What you see on the street rarely tells the complete story of what happens behind it.
The 58 Joralemon Street fake townhouse has become such a piece of New York lore that it inspired an online video game. In “58 Joralemon,” players must enter the mysterious building to fix a major emergency affecting the entire subway system. The game transforms infrastructure maintenance into adventure. It suggests that even the most mundane city systems contain hidden drama.
