The NYC Skyscraper Without Windows 

I’ve been in this building when I was with AT&T. It was originally used for the transatlantic cable project. Needless to say, wireless service was horrible. The freight elevators are massive. When entering the floor we occupied, it was like stepping back to the 60’s.

A few years back on my trip to NYC I walked past this building and got so confused, and it bothered me ever since then. Thanks for this!

A video game titled CONTROL took inspiration from this building. Its brutalist architecture and minimal windows are just so mysterious and haunting. Definitely can see why the building in the video game and its design used this building as its inspiration.

500 feet up, 500 feet down. That’s a nice server farm you got there.

This building reminds me of the Men In Black headquarters.

I feel like the lack of windows makes the building look smaller... it keeps tricking my eye into thinking it's only 10 floors or so, until you really notice it next to the other buildings or film it straight up. Wierd. We really rely on windows as a frame of reference for determining size in buildings

The 131 dislikes are the people who entered this building but were never able to leave.

This is the most interesting and fascinating story I’ve ever heard about NYC, thank you for making this video! I didn’t even know (how ignorant of me) that this building existed!

I was upstairs in that building a few years back, which was a pretty cool experience. Raised floors and acres of racks with miles of overhead wiring. Checking in at the front desk is like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. Huge empty foyer, large imposing desk, and two sign-in books: one blue (AT&T) and one red (VZ). I am sure there were others for the various 3-letter agencies, but I didn't see them. VZ, I believe, used to be at the WTC, but then got space at Thomas St after 9/11. Apologies if I missed this being mentioned in the video.

Surprised no one came out to say, "hi". Years ago, while photographing (35 mm) buildings in downtown Houston, I had a couple of friendly guys in suits and sunglasses politely tell me, " It's not allowed to photograph this building." These guys were either one of the alphabet agencies or the Men in Black. Weird.

If they tried discovering my secrets they'd be bored shitless.

👾 BTW this building is featured prominently in my sci-fi novella RETROWAVE: www.amazon.com/Retrowave-Ariel-Viera/dp/B088LBXBYV/

😱 Want to learn about another crazy skyscraper in NYC? This one is bulletproof: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-imxmAsNj4bc.html

Very similar AT&T (Southern New England Telephone) building in Hartford. Built in late 1960s. Very strong structural steel frame. No windows. Switching equipment in it then was probably replaced by one iPad!!

I used to work in the area for years. 1 day at lunch passing by with coworkers we saw 3 men having a smoke break out front at the top of the stairs. We asked what the bldg was and they looked at each other and just shook their heads NO. It is a telecommunication hub, but it reportably also monitors all international calls. Certain key words on calls would trigger monitoring allegedly. Btw AT&T has another huge bldg further north on Church St as well. I think it's even shown in the background on this video.

I have been in the windowless Chicago counterpart to the NYC building, as a cable splicing tech for Illinois Bell / Ameritech, known as "10 South Canal" The cafeteria was fully functional until at least the late 80's, (company cost cutting closed down most cafeteria's across the nation) mostly for employee convenience, as it would have been hard for most to go out to get a lunch and get back on the allotted lunch time of an hour or less. And as far as giving the government "access" to voice and data, there's a long history of that, even down to an event in the 1980's where a AT&T engineer checking an equipment facility on the coast in CA, noticed equipment in a fiber optic cable signal path that wasn't on company records. It turned out, it was a optical signal "splitter" that enabled the guvment to parse all data traffic going over that cable path (possibly to Hawaii and then to Asia), but his accidental whistle blowing raised awareness of such work. More recently, a "Room 641A" was disclosed by an AT&T employee ( wikipedia referenced info) disclosing a NSA access point to fiber optic signal paths.

That’s the Federal Bureau of Control, you’re not even supposed to be aware of the building’s existence ;)

Absolutely one of your best videos, I loved it and learned something new! Well Done!

This was a fascinating and incredibly well done video I gained WAY more knowledge than I thought I would looking up on RU-vid to simply find a video on this building with no windows in New York City.

Speaking of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, if it wasn't for Jacqueline, the iconic Grand Central Terminal would've gotten the same fate as the original Penn Station. The original Penn Station was enormous, a majestic building that rivaled Grand Central. One describes it compared to the current Penn Station as "One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.” When it was decided to demolish the building in favor of Madison Square Garden, there was outrage, but it wasn't enough to save it. It was a turning point in the preservation movement. Two years after its demolition, the city passed a landmarks preservation act, thereby creating the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Grand Central Terminal was next on the chopping block, as proposed by its then owner Penn Central in 1968. It was to be replaced by a Marcel Breuer office building design that looked like a shoebox lid on its side. Jacqueline Kennedy was having NONE of it. She joined the fight in 1975 with the Municipal Art Society and had a conference at the famous Oyster Bar where she said, "If we don’t care about our past, we can’t have very much hope for our future." Thanks to Jacqueline convincing the mayor (Abraham Beame), the terminal was ultimately saved by the city's LPC, but this was challenged by Penn Central in a Supreme Court case. In 1978, the court ruled in favor of the city. And the most beautiful building in NYC was saved.

July 2019 I visited NYC fresh from the new mexico desert and late one night I decided to leave my temporary home in the bronx and walk around downtown Manhattan. Knowing nothing i rode the train and got off on a random stop, it was about 11pm and the nightlife in chinatown hummed in a crimson red. I got drunk in a noodle shop and got lost looking for the train station, deep inside of the urban canyon i looked up and saw this skyscraper. I may as well have been staring at a mothership floating in the sky. The long, flat, almost chimney like structure of the building filled me with a sense of dread and ignorance, i couldn't even look where I was going.

There’s a building like this in Nashville owned by ATT and it was partially blown up by a van parked by it a few months ago. The network in the southeast US went down for a while.

I worked as an MCI telephone operator in the very early 1990's. We had rooms that were locked off & we were told that it was for the use of government to do spying. I worked in a mid-western town.

Another weird structure in NYC: At the western end of Canal Street, there is what looks to be an innocent pier with some benches...until you see an odd structure at the end of it. And then notice there's another pier with the same structure on the NJ side. And you might wonder "What is that?". Those are ventilation shafts for the Holland Tunnel. The Holland Tunnel is named as such not because of the area's Dutch heritage but rather because of Clifford Milburn Holland, the tunnel's chief engineer who died from a heart attack three yours before it opened due to stress from the project. When the tunnel opened in 1927, it was the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in the world, as well as the world's first mechanically ventilated tunnel. The ventilation system was designed by Ole Singstad, a Norwegian who also worked on Lincoln, Brooklyn-Battery, and Queens-Midtown Tunnels.

Wonder how often people working there are thinking "Are we the bad guys?"

Usually, I'm not a fan of the brutalist architectural style, but this windowless building is fascinating. Very interesting information...thanks, Ariel!

The fact that the address has "33" in it tells you who in control.

Another great video Ariel. You always bring varied and interesting information. So grateful I found your channel. Keep it up Ariel!

Thanks for this, I had no idea this building existed!

I'm a retired AT&T Long Lines employee who worked before and after the divestiture of AT&T until the reconstitution of AT&T from the SBC / AT&T merger in Nov 2005. I heard many rumors about the building I worked in at 635 Grant Street in Pittsburgh, PA, e.g., that the building was strong enough to survived the annihilation of the USX building across the street if it fell on the AT&T building. It is absolutely true that AT&T monitored international phone calls in and out of the USA as early as the 1980's, when I started working there. I know, because I was an overseas telephone operator when everything still had an analog component. We used switchboards with cords, and we operators could listen into any conversation that was happening at anytime. We weren't permitted to do that, but we could monitor the line for transmission quality. I heard many interesting things, like drug deals from public phones here in the US and women calling their military husbands in Germany to complain about the kids or having no money. AT&T is a quasi government agency and trust that they monitor everything they possibly can. I finally left the company in 2009 when they started recording all of our customer interactions and searching our call records for any keywords like "fuck" or other swear words.

I subscribed afew hours ago, but am already addicted to watching this channel. Wow....so much architectural designs! And secrets too!

Fascinating information as usual - thank you Urbanist!

That’s New York for you. I’ve been here 5 years now and I’ve never heard of this street till now

Most big cities have a building or two like this. They were used to house switching systems for telecommunications. The lack of windows were for environmental control. I think security was just a secondary concern.

I didn't even know this building existed until last year, and I'm a native New Yorker. It's crazy how nobody has ever really talked about it until in recent years.

We always used to say that if the planes had hit 33 Thomas they would have bounced right off.

Dude, this is awesome. First time Ive heard a comprehensive explanation on this.

Love the dramatic music at 7:31 when introducing the building ... not only that but also the way the camera panned upward to the top of the structure

Secret Service, FBI, CIA, DEA, NSA, Google all in one building

Love this subject material. Thanks for the video. We have an old AT&T building in my area, Appleton, wi. Similar architecture but with windows. The base is also granite. When I was younger I worked for a maintenance company that serviced the building. It also had a massive basement. There was the basement that the everyday employees had access to, but under that was one that had 20’ ceilings with massive fuel tanks to several generators, kitchen area, coolers, and other rooms we didn’t go in. I had only been in there twice. It was rather amazing to be in there, reminds me that there are plans for the potential of mass destruction on US soil and we need to stay prepared.

This is not the only building owned by att in nyc that’s windowless. There is a second building on 10th ave and 53rd street in Manhattan

this video will self destruct in 30 seconds...

This building is SUCH an old topic and has not been a mystery for years.

AT&T has skyscrapers all over the country with no windows. They house telecom equipment. There is one at the corner of Madison and Canal in Chicago, for example. There isn't much of interest inside.

Who would or could work in a windowless building for 8 hours? Sounds crazy as hell. Yet I am fascinated...

AT&T actually has several windowless buildings here in California ,I’ve seen one in the Central Valley and also in east Los Angeles

Brutalism ❤️

I get visions of the Movie "The Day After" with Jason Robarts Shown in the late 1980's It was so terrifying that After the movie (ABC) had to show a disclaimer to calm everyone down!

Good info. There’s another building 20 miles outside of NYC.

This building is fascinating in many ways. Thank you so much for letting me be aware of it. The ventilation system must be a marvel of technology.

I just walked by this building yesterday during my vacation in New York. We wondered what it was and now this video pops up in my suggestions.

Chicago has a similar ATT building at Canal and Madison. I believe it does have windows on some top floors of the building, but it's very similar to the one in this video.

Maybe your best video so far

When I first graduated architecture school in the late 1980’s, I worked for Warnekes firm, which was fairly small at that point. By that time he was a little hard of hearing and would basically yell questions at you. It was terrifying

OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV

This is the building that the video game Control uses as inspiration

Wow. Where do you get all this info from. The building is an AT&T switch. There is three floors of underground because of the Cable and fiber leaving building goes underground. The fuel is for the generators that keep the Telco working in the event of a power outage. The electrical contractor is there to add or improve any AC issues with this building. The cafeteria is in the basement because it would take up valuable real estate on the above ground floors. Those above ground floors are probably 16 feet tall each. Did you notice the huge empty space beside the building. With just parking for AT&T vehicles. Below is more Cable vault for the massive amount of wire and fibre that feeds all the Lower Manhattan Buildings. Central offices do not need windows. Windows would inhibit the placement of equipment and the vertical cable rising to each floor. I would be surprised if there was more than 20 AT&T employees at any time in the building.

If you were my history teacher I probably would have been a historian.

When I worked for AT&T in London I used to talk to people who worked in this bulding all the time. Never got to go inside myself, though.

Can I pay my outrageous phone bill there?

I distinctly remember this building just visiting NY as a tourist, really sticks out

The number 33 always appears at places like these

4:54 - 5:00 When he mentioned the machines, I swear, I thought he was leading up to Skynet!

In Moscow, there is a 21-story skyscraper without windows that also have a supercomputer inside that collects data about people in Russia. What a coincidence.

If you're looking at a building to survive a nuclear attack, you don't build a tower.

We have building like this in Raleigh NC!

There’s one like that on exhibition street in Melbourne Australia it’s basically a huge telephone exchange the outside layer is used to route the wiring

So basically this is the citadel of New York City

Thank you for this important work. God bless you brother. 🕊️

I used to work right across the street from that building and wondered what that building was for. I always knew that it had to be some kind of federal building, because there's a lot of federal buildings in that area.

"This video is about bricks..." 🤣

I'm honestly shocked you weren't detained and questioned as to why you were filming critical infrastructure. Those guys don't play around, or so I'm told.

Wow that was fascinating! You do such varied and great videos

"Nuclear war was eminent" . . . . . Imminent. 'Eminent' is the quality of being famous and respected, 'imminent' is 'about to happen' . . . . . Great video and i do wish i had known about this during my visit a few years ago: next time.

I doubt that you or anyone who cares will ever review this comment, but I will leave it anyway. I encountered this video on “shorts”. Without a word being spoken I instantaneously knew who owned and used this building and I have never stepped foot into NYC. I’m from Rome, Ga. and we had a building that it reminded me of for some reason. This was not a skyscraper rather a three story building in our town. It too was originally built by Southern Bell. The parent company in the beginning that eventually became AT&T. At first glance I knew that the building in your video would be owned by AT&T as ours was and was a switching station for MaBell when built. Odd, huh??

“Granite is flame resistant” - you cannot set fire to rock, you’ve heard it hear first people.

There's a similar building owned by AT&T in Nashville,TN. It was the target of the Christmas Day bombing a year or so ago. It was a disgruntled former employee that thought 5G was giving people cancer.

when I live in NYC I always thought this building was a gas-off-air flow exchange for the subway system. I guess not!

9:00 you know thats security watching you

8:54 the undercover casually smoking a cigarette keeping an eye on our presenter lol

You didn't mention the mounts for gun turrets on each corner of the building.

Is anyone really surprised that NSA is recording all the communications coming and going from the US though?

Thank you for making me aware of brutalism. Great video.

wish the video was longer, thank you man.

Fascinating look into this building. Thanks 🎉

you don't see people going in and out much from the street. I would bet a dollar that this building had subway access or tunnel access from a less conspicuous spot, where there is a saturation of people always moving about.

Wow! Thank you for that, so very interesting and cool!

Very interesting. Thank you for posting.

This building soon makes me think of Duga Radar,also known as "the woodpecker" in the Chernobyl area... both interesting & mysterious at the same time

this building was in men in black.

I live in Italy and it’s not uncommon to see this type of hideous buildings, especially at the edge of cities. Every time I see one, 1984 comes to mind

I'm pretty sure the Hugh O'Kane trucks are legit. I've worked in Mid-Town for years, and have seen them in front of legit office buildings (that have nothing to do with the Federal Government) many times. As well, there used to be another one of those windowless telecom monoliths nearby: the Verizon building, near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. But they retro-fitted it with windows.

From the title, I immediately guessed you were going to talk about an electronic communications building. AT&T has many other buildings with few windows. Now, I doubt they need all that space inside, given how technology has advanced over the years. I suspect inside there is a lot of unused space. Of course, for a building like this, there's not really anything else you can do with unused space, other than store stuff.

That's it, new favorite channel.

Excellent video, however the reason it does not have windows is nothing to do with heat, but obviously to protect it from shockwave, radiation etc from an atomic bomb explosion.

Hugh O'Kane Electric is a telecommunications installation, electrical maintenance, and electrical contracting company in the New York City and New Jersey area.

Thank you for telling us what this building is all about!!, walked by for 20 yrs and couldn’t figure it out!!!

their are building like this in most big city's not just nyc they dont all look the same but if look long a nuff one can find them

😂👉🏼 i thought that was the MIB building

Yes O'Kane Electric is a long time established NYC electrical contractor, they do residential and commercial work, and have decades of experience on large printing press machinery and communications and data services. I worked for them as a Journeyman Electrician in the mid 1980's