My dad works at that AT&T building. He's been with AT&T for over 30 years now, and he is under an NDA and won't really say what he does there, only that it's very important to New York and that the quality of life in NY would decrease if the building wasn't there. He also said it's not really that serious and that if the building just looked normal then no one would even care.

33 Thomas Street is literally where everything telecommunications for North America & Europe lives. My mother worked for AT&T and she basically told me that, if something ever happened to that building, almost all forms of communication from Los Angeles to Paris would be down. We would be back to using a town crier or other kinds of primitive means of communication if something happened to that building. That's why that building is so secure.

“Clear blue waters … of the Hudson River” this made me chuckle.

These "fake" buildings are actually more common than you think worldwide. In London and Paris, there are a lot of them exist to be used as ventilation inlets and outlets for the Underground (London) and Paris Metro/RER (Paris).

The first fake building is located at 58 Jaman Street. It was originally constructed in 1847 as a private residence. In 1907, it was purchased by the INB Rapid Transit company to vent air from the subway underneath it. The building was completely hollowed out and now serves as an emergency exit for the subways. The second fake building is located on Roosevelt Island. It was built in 1892 as a laboratory for City Hospital. It was abandoned in the 1950s and is now a power conversion substation for the subway trains. The third fake building is located in the middle of the Hudson River. It was built in 1927 to vent air from the Holland Tunnel. The fourth fake building is located at Mulry Square. It was built in 2019 to vent air from the subway underneath it. The fifth fake building is located at 33 Thomas Street. It was built in 1974 and is owned by AT&T. It is rumored to be a National Security Agency mass surveillance hub.

As a native New Yorker this is one of the most informative video about NYC that I've ever seen. Thanks Cash for always creating great videos

its not fake if the buildings have purpose....

You really know how to romanticize New York. Always hated the idea of the city but you make it seem super interesting and the history is amazing. Im a super history nerd and never realized the history of New York is so great

There was a show many years ago (about 20 years ago) called "Secrets of New York.” One of their episodes, I remember, was about the subway system. Reportedly, there’s tons of water underneath our city, and if it weren’t because of massive water pumps, our subways would be flooded. I think some of these secret buildings may be for the purpose of having these machines running and for air vent purposes. Awesome video!!

“Clear blue waters of the Hudson River.”😂

You’re so creative with your transitions, b roll, and editing

Cash, your videos are SO good! The way you tell a story is phenomenal! You could make a video about dirt exciting! Love ya. Keep up the great work!

The ATT building is a pretty common design for hubs built by phone companies back when it was constructed. We have smaller version in the city I grew up in. It's around 6 stories tall no windows, only vents around the top, and was built in the same time frame. These are the major switch hubs for the wired phone system, miles of wire, rows and rows of relay switching boxes, offices, and where phone operators and maintenance crews worked out of. They were built solid to mitigate communications disruptions, needed to have strict climate control & ventilation for all the electronics, hence no windows, and tight security. Plus they were built during the cold war era, wired phones were the main form of communication at the time, including secure governmental lines, so another reason security was a factor in the design. Ours had security guards wandering around 24/7 back in the 60's & 70's. Gotta remember too, this was all before the digital age, there were no computers or micro-controllers, rotary phones were in use back then, and it was all electronic relays that connected every phone in the country to each other through hubs like these. I imagine NYC's is so big because, well, millions of people vs a city of 40,000 where ours is. Ours is no longer ATT, last time I was in the area it was branded Frontier internet & phone services, and still controls all the wired landline phones and DSL internet. All the rows and rows of relay boxes were replaced by racks of servers, and the vents now have windows installed.

"I don't think they did a very good job at hiding the fakeness of this fake building" had me in stitches! 🤣 unfinished disaster, indeed!

Great info on some of these "fake buildings" and very entertaining video! Thank you. The "Find Building Data" section of the NYC gov website also has a treasure trove of info about a building's history...permits, violations, etc. History is very cool.

This guy presentation style is crazy, am subscribing

The first thing I noticed about that first building is that they aren't actually trying to disguise it. $40 worth of white paint would actually make it fit in with its neighbors. Like, they aren't actually trying to make it look like an actual house. It looks more like a facade for a medium security document storage facility, but if it actually had important stuff in it, they would have spent that 40 bucks and taken two or three other measures like weathering, fake curtains, etc.

We have fake buildings in Ontario in the suburbs that look like regular houses but are hydro substations. Always loved those buildings. Great video!

I love your sense of humor. Great video.

Hey I like your energy! Life goals my man

Years ago I worked for an energy company and I had to go check a place which I presumed to be a building, it had an address but I couldn't find it on a map and I had to ask some other employees what was going on. Turned out it was a space under railway tracks and to get there I had to open a heavy duty steel gate and a steel door in a pedestrian underpass. Inside that quite a large place were huge number of computers in racks, I guess they were monitoring trains etc. It was kinda creepy place.

I love your friendly way to tell things: important, weird, funny, strange or special.

This is the kind of KZfaq video worth watching. I wish they had a section for great videos that they could put stuff like this in and charge extra for and give the profits to the creators. That way you would not have to sift through the junk and clickbait.

I just found this channel and I really am enjoying these vids this content rocks. Great work One Love

I love that you aren’t afraid to show the real New York. I enjoyed this video

yup it's probably a building full of servers for the NSA.

The first one, 58 Joralemon Street is actually an emergency exit for the MTA subway station below it. So it is a kinda hidden passageway technically hahaha

Incredible! I absolutely love old buildings structures and hearing the stories about them! When my old man takes me up on Garrett Mountain in Paterson to our landlords place on a clear day you an see that bridge to Manhattan on a good day!

I don't even know how but I've become addicted to this channel.

The vent for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel all the way downtown was used for the Men in Black HQ entrance. Roosevelt Island used to be called Blackwells island, and housed a hospital for patients needing to be quarantined, a prison and an asylum. The journalist Nellie Bly faked being insane to get checked into the asylum and exposed horrific treatment and conditions, which got the place shut down (it was akin to what Geraldo Rivera found at Willowbrook in Staten Island.)

First time watching and let me tell you, it's an excellent video. Great job; hope your channel keeps growing, I know it will... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 🤗

New York is incredible. I’ve been twice and can’t stop looking at videos and reading about it. So many cool things and history. The construction is mind blowing!

This is another great video. You would make a great reporter Cash!

As a New Yorker, i love this video! Thank you for showing aspects of this city that i wouldn't otherwise see.

Love your videos, they are so informative and interesting. Keep up the good work.

They are not 'fake'. They are just buildings, doing what buildings do.

Cash u r now an investigative reporter. Awesome dude!!!!👏👆👊

It's depressing to know that we built so many great things at a time without computers, we invested in jobs and infrastructure, while today with massive wealth generated over the past 70 years of prosperity since ww2, cash is staying idle not going into new investments that can create so much positive change for the world. Talk about the rich hoarding money...

We have the fake houses over in the UK in London to use as a vent for the underground but ours is an entire block and was originally going to be just a fence you could see over but the people of the neighbourhood didn’t want a gaping hole in their view so the council decided to put up a wall of fake houses with no roofs. Worked pretty well.

Great video. Really enlightening!

@0:02, there is a similar grand looking fake facade building at 23-24 Leinster Gardens in London (UK) which serves as a vent for the Metropolitan tube line. The Strecker building is beautiful. Glad that it is being reused rather than falling into dereliction.

Wowee Cash, your real estate and city videos have been really entertaining for the last couple years 🎉now with your excellent reporting I’m gaining real in-depth knowledge! Really appreciate all your hard work as a business and family man🤓

The big ominous building in New York is a server building owned by AT&t. How did nobody guess this? Servers don't need Windows. Servers also don't need a lot of people to operate them. But being such a robust structure the city probably required that it be an emergency facility in case of disaster.

I like that you explained what the buildings are instead of leaving everyone to believe the rumors.

33 Thomas Street is definitely some data center of sorts, I'd imagine. There are main hubs for internet backbones that have to live somewhere. Seems pretty reasonable to convert a beefed up building that was originally a telephone exchange into a highly secure data center. I wouldn't have any doubts of it also being used for government shenanigans as well.

Cash-Your selection of content is absolutely fabulous! You present material that everyone is interested in. That was a great idea. A++ Keep going!☮️👏👏👏👏

Hysterical presentation- great work !

This is intriguing! Thanks for sharing! :)

AT&T is totally helping the government illegally eavesdrop on Americans.

2:30 we have these in London for the underground.

I never cease to be amazed by the facts you do not know.

The “clear blue Hudson” made me laugh. That entire river is full of PCB from the Federal Dam in Troy, all the way to New York Bay. You can’t even eat fish out of the river, sadly. PS- great, informative video. Subscribed.

The AT&T building at 33 Tomas Street is a telecom switching hub (node switches) for the tri-state area and the northeast. I used to work in the building

Down the road from me, which I live next to a watershed, is a abandoned small building. I was told it’s a well/pumping station and it’s pipes are underground, go down my road, to pump water into a stream that then fills a reservoir (lake) that supplies water to a nearby town. It’s used when there is drought, the watershed and stream dries up. Otherwise, it looks like an ordinary abandoned small barn.

Another great video, Cash!

regarding the creepy unmarked tower in NYC. I found a creepy huge tower like this in SF. still curious what it is... have some pretty good theories. thanks for sharing this so more people can know about these weird buildings!

Cash... Your videos are more and more interesting. You are way more than a realtor.

I've worked at the dying pier 8 -9 for years.. years before the park was started and well after it was done. This building actually is an access point for FDNY, Con Ed, the EPA and other utilities. And it's no "secret". They be out there posted up with cones and big red utility vehicles sometimes within a year. You will see them working, coming in and out of the building. The real locals within that area knows of it's existence. Even myself, passing by to my once container job, when i didn't want to drive the 15 minutes to and from work, only to struggle for parking once arriving home. My doctor's office is still in that area as we speak.

This WAS a very interesting video.thank you for inviting me to watch your video ‼️🙋🏽👍🏽😃.

It looks so cool at night. I like the eerie style!

Well if it’s owned by AT&T and AT&T trucks parked around it then isn’t it obvious? It’s probably where they have routers, signals and whatever else they use to make the internet and tv work. Theres a place here in my area in Atlanta that looks exactly like it only it’s just one story and it’s also owned by AT&T.

This is so interesting! Great job Cash!! ,Love your videos!

Love the vid, and the shoes!!

Man that’s so cool! I’m still never visiting that cesspool 😂

It is wild the things people could build so long ago and now they cut corners to build homes.

This is such a brilliant video and very unique 🤣. Great job Cash! 💯

2:52 Imagine paying 6m for that shit. What an absolute waste.

This is fascinating!!

Super interesting, Cash! Love these off the beaten track videos!

Interesting application of urban design. Interesting how most of them are ventilation units for the tunnels. That's something most folks don't think about until they have to.

This was literally part of my bucket list when visiting NYC for the first time... see an apartment building, 'that looked like it had at at least one point been on the credit sequence of an eighties/ nineties film or sitcom' !😂

Love your content. I feel like I know NY a little bit more :)

So I guess it doesn't have a faucet sprayer Cash !! 😢

I had no idea New York has all these fake buildings, the last one might be a data farm, you have to have ventilation for those gigantic computers. Thanks Cash

Very interesting. I once worked at a Multi-Billion Dollar Collection Agency in their Client Services Department, part of the training was to remember to ask the owner of At&T; " may I please put you on hold", instead of just doing so, or just saying, please hold, this was like 20 years ago.

I like your new take on your channel.

I knew I recognized you as we walked past at 1:26. Can't wait for more videos on Brooklyn!

That big, ugly, tall building may be AT&T's POP (which stands for Point of Presence) in NYC. The switches (now-a-days they're computers) that handle all the telephone traffic on the upper East Coast and transAtlantic may be housed in that building. Think about the call volume at any given moment in the northeastern US, along with call volume from the US and Europe, and you're looking at millions of calls at any given second. May also do some processing of cellular traffic as well. (Worked in telecommunications for 29 years)

this vid is CASH at his best. very informative but also lmbo every couple of minutes. well done man.

There are 3 buildings I have seen which say "government property, can be shot". And all were hard to find and I only did because I used to explore a lot when I was a bit younger. One was in Lincolnville, SC, one was in Colonial Beach, VA, and one was in Matoaca, VA.

Thank you for bringing this up.

What a great day Cash!! Still love NY❤

33 Thomas St inspired the design of The Oldest House in the phenomenal game Control (2019). The address is even listed on in game documents. Such a cool design.

Hello Cash!! Have you ever thought of doing a live chat so we can ask you questions about Real Estate and about yourself?! That would be awesome!!! Maybe interview some of your colleagues and get their opinions on what their favorite Apartments and their least favorite Apartments that they have ever toured?!? Love you!!! 😊

The AT&T massive building built during the Cold War Era can only suggest one conclusion - providing as secure communications center as possible, just in case. And I also have it quite easy to imagine that wired connection might still be of more value than cell phones in a big time emergency. And in fact, how are the cell tower transmitters getting their signals in the first place? Or where and how do they forward your cell phone calls? I think wired connections to some central switching facilities are to be expected even in the cell phone era.

Enjoyed the video❣️

That pier would make a great techno club :D

I like that you have a variety of things on your channel.

I really enjoyed this video Cash very interesting.

Cool stuff, now do one about fake streets. The Hudson River tunnel buildings, if I'm not mistaking, were actually featured in Daylight, well, at least as far as the movie's narrative went.

A lot of ATT's bldgs are windowless. Good vid!

Cash a real urbanist and voice for city planning. Love it!!

That "Townhouse" looks normal except for the windows. The laboratory building looks nice, I like the brick work. The 100yr old buildings for the tunnel stay maintained but not the New York sewer system- go figure.

We got a bunch of electrical buildings in our town that they built the outside to look like a small tiny house from a distance but once you get up close and see the fence and the holes in between the "walls" you can tell it's not a house

we have the same exact structure design in my little town about 40 miles north of Tampa, its an "AT&T" building but its surrounded by barred fence and no windows all concrete and brick, its very obscure and theres an AT&T van parked back but noone has ever seen anyone go in or out. Bit of an urban legend in my town

Dope video! learned something new today.

That first building kinda elevates the aesthetic of the block because it's so neatly painted and provides some contrast. Also the history of Roosevelt Island itself is pretty interesting.

We've got a huge warehouse in Sydney, Australia that is a giant sewage tank, built to hold excess created when there's a lot of rain and it overloads the sewage system. Looks like a normal warehouse building in an industrial estate.

The first building is an air shaft for the transit authority when the tunnel between Boro hall and bowling green was being worked on we turned it on within minutes it was shut off due to a judge living there had it turned off . We had to bring in portable fans to vent the tunnel so we could continue to work

Loved the informative content of this video, thank you!! 💖