The House on Wade Avenue

[Turtle]

It's a seemingly normal enough looking house, sitting along Wade Avenue in a typical residential neighborhood in Raleigh, NC. But it's not what it seems.

If you look close, you'll see no driveway, no garage, no walkway to the front door. There are no lights, the windows are blacked out, and the front door doesn't open. Around back there are more windows that are all blacked out. There is an AC unit connected, but it's just an AC shell that houses nothing. It's all for show. What's going on here?

Inside this facade is a city water pumping station, disguised to blend into the neighborhood, and built with special soundproofing materials to prevent the neighbors from going crazy.

And there are similar fake buildings in cities and states all over this land. They hide water pumping stations, energy substations, trains, subways, you name it. I'm sure you've seen some of the clever hiding places for cell phone towers.

 

[RoadTime]

My initial gut thought was that's pretty stupid, but after watching the video, I think that's actually pretty cool. I especially liked the cell phone tower trees and cactus disguises. I had no clue this stuff was even being done, I guess that means it's working

 

[Turtle]

I was vaguely aware of some of it, but I had no idea just how much of it is happening. There's a relatively large power station in Chicago disguised as a Georgian mansion, and one in downtown Nashville disguised as an office building. There are about 30 homes in Toronto that are fake enclosures for power substations.

My aunt who lives in Tuscon has a large, thirty-foot tall Saguaro cactus cell tower in her back yard, compete with scars, woodpecker holes and thousands of tiny painted needles. A cactus wren lives in one of the holes.

I first noticed the cell phone towers in Los Angeles, because of a really badly designed one. A sky-scraping pine tree that was build of glossy painted brown metal, with only some pine branches at the very top. It was like, "Why bother?" because it looked stupid, worse than a skeletal tower would look. But I started noticing some that are very well done, especially some of the palm and coconut trees. Santa Monica and Malibu are dotted with very convincing towers. They're all over the place, if you look for them.

I have since found out that the notion of fake cell phone towers started in Denver in the early 90s to get rid of a particularly bad eye sore of a tower, and the idea has spread worldwide. Some of these things cost $150,000, versus the $35,000 for a normal tower.

 

[RoadTime]

Now that you mention the bad looking ones, I do remember seeing a really bad looking Palm tree in Florida. Like you said, "Why bother?"

 

[Brisco]

Some 30 plus years ago in South Lubbock they dug out probably 2 larger than Football Field sized holes about 10 stories deep in a cotton field right outside our neighborhood. Our neighborhood was more in the affluent part of town........Very Edge of Town.......and Lubbock was growing quickly Southward.......so it was kind of a neat project to see it going on as teenagers......especially not knowing why the heck they were digging a Grand Canyon type of hole out there.

Turned out to be a Water Pumping Station / Reservoir to handle the growth South Lubbock had expected in the future. Today it is a Huge Tennis Court Complex and Family Activity Center for the City of Lubbock. Almost that whole complex sits atop that HUGE city sized hole in the ground they dug over 3 decades ago. I'm quite sure there are many Lubbockites that live in South Lubbock today that have No Idea there's a Water Reservoir sitting underneath that huge Tennis / Sports Complex as they play Tennis there or just drive by it on a daily basis.