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A multi-millionaire plans to triple the size of his London mansion by digging down 50ft to create a four-storey basement complete with swimming pool, spa, ballroom and no fewer than 12 bedrooms. Architects’ drawings show how the vast house, originally built as a school in the 19th century, will be created by excavating deeper than the height of neighbouring homes. As well as the spa area, it will have servants’ quarters consisting of five staff bedrooms. There will also be wine cellars, an art storage room, parking for three vehicles and a car lift. Estate agents estimate the property could be worth up to £90million with the work completed. Neighbours who have objected to the plans include novelist Edna O’Brien and the Duchess of St Albans Gillian Beauclerk. The duchess said: ‘These plans are absolutely monstrous and unnecessary. It’s just absolute greed. No one needs that much space.’
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Just decrypted this blueprint of the White House from JFK’s term—it looks like he signed off on the construction of a secret safe room under the White House while Jackie O was renovating.
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A underground facility and bunker dubbed “The Facility” in Southeast Georgia two hours from Savannah just hit the market for $17.5 million. The property, which is exclusively listed by Sister Hood of Harry Norman, Realtors Buckhead Office, was built in 1969 and fully renovated to government standards in 2012. According to Harry Norman, it is the only hardened and privately owned underground bunker of its kind in the United States. The property features a commercial 3-Phase power plant, in addition to its own 8Kw new solar backup system. The facility is also equipped with a $100,000 CCTV security system.
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Worried about the end of the world? For those who can afford them, one company is creating subterranean housing complexes – modern-day super-bomb-shelters across the United States designed to survive any apocalyptic scenario yet imagined. Killer comets, pole shifts, super volcanoes, global tsunamis, extreme earthquakes, biological and nuclear war – each are scenarios supposedly covered in the design plans by Vivos of these luxury underground homes to be built in 120 locations in range of most major US cities.
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The Survive-a-Storm Max underground steel storm shelter is ideal for larger families or small businesses. Measuring 10-feet long by 6-feet wide, the Max Model can be buried in your yard in just a few hours. With its coal tar epoxy coating, you will receive the same protection against rust and corrosion as an underground gas storage tank or cross-country pipeline. This shelter has bench seating on three sides, with a stairway entering from the surface. We have even provided a steel handrail and non-slip stair treads for extra safety and convenience.
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Brett Jacobsen’s book Heaven’s Underground Blueprint has a twofold thrust: it is a prophetic work that paralells church history with Old Testament Israel, presenting insight into current happenings and great hope for the future. It also is instructive in the current reformation of the church into underground community.
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Have you ever heard about the guy who literally lived under a rock in the Californian desert, where legendary flying saucer conventions were held in the 1950s? We go back to the 1930s, when an eccentric German immigrant called Frank Critzer dug out this subterranean home for himself under the giant rock. He lived there alone, isolated from society with nothing but a radio antenna he set up on top of the rock to stay connected with the outside world. But in 1942, during a showdown with police who came to investigate rumours that he was in fact a Nazi spy, Frank died from a self-detonated dynamite explosion in his own bunker. Locals had reported strange behaviour, several incidents of Frank threatening trespassers with a shotgun and suspicion that he was a spy because of his radio antenna. After his death, Frank’s only friend, a former aircraft inspector named George Van Tassel, became the giant rock’s new tenant in 1947. In a few short years, George went from living a simple existence with his family in the rooms Frank Critzer had dug out under the Giant Rock, to building his own restaurant on the site, a small airstrip, and an extra-terrestrial research centre which would play host to his annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, attracting more than 11,000 people at its peak. The dome-shaped “Integraton” structure still survives today in Landers, California, near the Giant Rock but not as a pilgrimage site for ufologists. After Tassel’s death in 1978 there were plans to turn it into a disco. Instead, the new owners turned it into an 0ff-beat tourist attraction offering “sound baths”, claiming it to be “the only all-wood, acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.”
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After searching for photos for Hugh Hefner's upcoming April 9 birthday, the Playboy Mansion employee uncovered "some Polaroids from 1977 that showed a large excavation project at The Mansion." When the staff member inquired about the tunnels, the Mansion's general manager confirmed that Hefner had the tunnels built to connect the "bunnies" to celebrities' houses. The plans reference the homes of "Mr. J. Nicholson,""Mr. W. Beatty,""Mr. K. Douglas" and "Mr. J. Caan," which is enough information to distinguish the four highly recognizable monikers. All of the men lived near Hefner's world-renowned home during the '70s and '80s, so the underground maps could be legitimate. The tunnels were reportedly closed in 1989, around the same time Hefner married Playmate Kimberley Conrad, and, when asked, the general manager wouldn't disclose any more information about the hidden passageways.
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Plans to create a £70m dream mansion in the heart of Mayfair - complete with an underground leisure complex - have been submitted to planning bosses. At a huge 190-feet - more than half the size of a football pitch - the super-home could become the longest in London if plans are given the go-ahead. The 18th Century building on the corner of Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, will stretch all the way back so it incorporates the mews homes on Duke's Yard. It will boast large entertaining rooms, underground leisure facilities, luxury sleeping quarters, a courtyard and a price-tag of around £70 million. The hefty valuation is more than 250 times the price of an average home in the UK and around 450 times the average house price in the north east of England.
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The man who made a fortune out of building London's best known - and most controversial - estate agency and selling it for £390 million is planning an extraordinary subterranean playground at his home near Kensington Palace. Jon Hunt, founder of Foxtons, bought his Grade II-listed, eight-bedroom house in Kensington Palace Gardens - London's most expensive street - for £14 million in 2005. He now proposes to excavate a huge hole underneath the back garden, in which he wants to create a massive sports hall with viewing galleries. As well as a tennis court, pool and gym, the underground extension will also include a private “motor museum”, accessed from the road through a special ramp, for his multi-million pound collection of six vintage Ferraris. The excavation will be 50 ft deep, equivalent to at least four stories in height.
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This decommissioned military base complex turned silo home-in-a-hole is anything but Top Secret today. Its owners boast the set of converted structures to be the “world’s most unique luxury home. The subterranean launch control center is a cylinder surrounded by an epoxy-resin, steel-reinforced, three-foot-thick structural wall that (particularly given its depth in the ground) is essentially as apocalypse-proof as a home gets. The entire structure is suspended on springs to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast. Forget blueprints and standard floor plans: this historic house comes with its own top-secret, government-certified schematics. 2.3 million dollars might sound like a lot – even for a high-end mansion – but if you consider that the original cost of construction was around ten times that much (in 1950s dollars, without accounting for inflation) the current converted property seems a steal by comparison. Oh, and their FAQ page points out that the Russians are well aware that the silo has been decommissioned, so presumably they would no longer consider it a primary target should an all-out world war come along.
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You wouldn’t happen to be in the market for a 1970s underground family home, equipped to live in for up to a year without resurfacing in the event of a nuclear missile strike that wipes out humanity, would ya? Because it just so happens one has just come onto the market. And this piece of real estate gold could be all yours for the bargain price of $1.7 million. The subterranean Las Vegas home at 3970 Spencer St. near Flamingo Road boasts a 15,200-square-foot basement beneath a two story home above ground. From the street, number 3970 looks like any other American home, except with a few extra ventilation and air conditioning units planted around the yard. Camouflaged by clusters of rocks, an entrance with an elevator takes you down to the underground lair. Another stairway is hidden inside a shed. The house was built in 1978 to withstand a nuclear blast by an arguably ‘paranoid’ wealthy businessman, Girard “Jerry” B. Henderson. The ambitious homeowner made his fortune with several companies including Avon cosmetics and Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
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KC, MO Area: $479,000.00 or OBO Comes with almost all the furniture and decor. Hardened Underground Bunker-Home on 10.5 acres/ml. A 1960s nuclear war-proof communication center, 10,700 sq. ft of usable floor space and can easily be expanded to much more, 2 ft thick concrete walls and ceilings, 3-4 ft of graded earth over the top, copper shielding against EMP, 2- 2,000 lb blast doors, 8 air vents with filtration and blast valve closure mechanisms. Water well on site with a new pump, 10,000 gallon underground stainless steel water storage tank, Aquasana Water Filtration System, escape hatch emergency exit, 177 ft tower that can be used for Hamm Radio or even possible cell tower. Lighting, pumps, heating, dehumidification and electric hoist operational. New water pipes and new aluminum roof on entry building. Occupied continuously for the last 5 years, the current owners remodeled much of the structure creating a two-story living space that includes a functional kitchen, bathroom, shower, large living room with a new electric fireplace, 4-6 bedrooms depending on use/needs, gym with equipment (treadmill, 2 bikes and workout machines), sound proof music studio with vocal/recording booth and connected storage room, very large 16 ft ceiling recreation area, other living and storage areas. All VERY NICELY done. Commercial zoning, low property tax. Ready to move in. Contact through Email if interested! Serious Purchasing Inquiries ONLY!
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A creepy graveyard complete with a decaying crypt. Inside the crypt are steps leading down to a mysterious underground house (unfurnished.) The lot size is 2x3. This lot contains the following custom content created by myself: 5 original mesh gravestones (Find in decorative/ sculpture. They can be placed anywhere indoors or outdoors.) 3 spooky trees - one being the Maxis spooky tree except it can be placed on floor tiles. The other two are derived from Maxis trees with texture/shape changed. (Find all in decorative/sculpture. They can be placed anywhere indoors or outdoors.) 9 floor textures, including a dead grass texture for floor tiles. 2 terrain textures, including a matching dead grass texture. 21 wall textures, many of them multiple tile textures. The house is not furnished. The one issue with this underground house is that objects that have to be placed against walls can't be placed against the exterior walls unless you use the "moveobjects on" cheat. I have a furnished version in my game and I found that I didn't need to use the cheat at all. All interior walls work as usual. The cost of this lot is approximately 27,000.
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This Minecraft underground house/base design/ideas build tutorial on Xbox, PE, PS3, and or PC is very easy to do and looks really great anywhere in your world.
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The author of this plan speculated on building this spherical city in Manhattan bedrock—a structure which so far as I can determine would have a volume of 1.2 cubic miles (5 km3) with its top beginning some 1,200’ under Times Square […] Newman published this in 1969 (?!) after somehow latching onto the idea of clearing out massive underground caverns with nuclear explosions—in this case, the space would be hollowed out under Manhattan. The underground sphere would be a miniature version of whatever was above it—along the medial there would be a “topside” of a regular city with streets and high rise buildings, underneath which would exist an underground city for the underground city. In this honeycomb would exist the means of production and energy, segmented in multi-block-sized enclosures of no charm.
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A luxurious underground mansion is being built beneath the grounds of Limehurst, a Victorian property converted into flats. The entrance to the two-storey, three-bedroom mansion, named the Earth House, is a front door disguised as a 2.6m-high garden folly, leading to a central spiral staircase down to the main hallway and living area on the lower ground floor. 'I am confident that this house in Bowdon will become an architectural landmark - albeit one that most people will never see.'
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While each risk situation is unique and requires a methodical threat assessment tailored to the client's needs, the experience of the Hardened Structures Team across the spectrum of threats has enabled us to design a modular, configurable system that enables survivability in even the most demanding scenarious. Called the Genesis Series, this underground shelter system provides protection against a wide range of disasters including 2012 scenarios. For protecting your family or family group, the Genesis Series is unmatched in the industry.
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This astonishing planning document illustrates why the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea has decided to outlaw the super-sized basement extensions that local billionaires seem so fond of. The multi-level subterranean recreation areas often go far beyond the boundaries of the aboveground properties, and have cracked walls and even affected the foundations of neighboring houses. In a famous case from 2012, excavation work under the mansion of a Goldmann Sachs director resulted in his neighbor getting trapped inside her home, unable to open her front door since it had shifted so much. A cabinet member for planning policy told The Guardian that basement extensions are "the single greatest planning concern our residents have expressed to us in living memory."
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I ran into the Hal B. Hayes residence, formerly in Hollywood, California, which Popular Mechanics Magazine described as a House For the Atomic Age. Ever practical, the magazine notes how Mr. Hayes designed the house to withstand or flex against the stresses of an atomic bomb blast. The outer walls are “fluted to resist shock waves” and the large front glass window, pictured above, will sweep away in the same blast. There is a secret underground sanctuary accessed only by swimming underwater, as well as another hidden underground room equipped with bottled oxygen.
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This was my underground home before the criminals at the DEPI demolished it.
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Like something straight from a science fiction or horror movie scene, this underground nuclear missile silo was once a dank, dark and deserted structure of interest to no one – until man saw past the pooled water and cracked concrete and began to build by hand the ultimate underground dream house for himself in the family. Occupying only a third of the nearly 20,000 available square feet of total military base, Ed Peden and his family live in a world of weird wonder purchased for a relative pittance at $48,000 and derelict for decades when he went to buy it. On the surface, former escape hatches now look like castle turrets and a shack-like structure is about all there is to mark the entrance to this domain.
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You may have heard stories about people renovating their homes, only to stumble upon a secret room. Perhaps it’s a play room? A cellar? A place to stash sensitive documents and treasures? All that mystery can be pretty scary yet exciting. But back in 1963, a resident of Nevşehir Province of Turkey found a secret room behind one of his walls. This secret room led to a tunnel ... which led to an incredible discovery: the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu is not the largest nor oldest underground city. But at 18 stories, it is the deepest.
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World was so much different back in the 60’s and fears and terror from Cold War was almost part of people’s everyday life. During that period, a businessman and philanthropist named Girard B. Henderson spent quite a lot of money for a project he called The Underground Home. From ground level, you would see a house. But it was not the house. It was just its entrance. There were obviously some stairs to take you down. There was even a control panel to control and adjust temperatures and radiation (yes…we are talking about nuclear holocaust, remember?)
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Wrecking ball destroys underground safe room
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From the outside, it looks like an elegant Spanish-style ranch house but Hacienda de la Paz in L.A.’s Palos Verdes Peninsula is so much more than that. The $53 million mansion, which recently went to market, meets local building codes in the posh, gated city of Rolling Hills by keeping to one story. But those rules don’t say a word about building underground. What’s not visible from the street are five magnificent subterranean levels on 50,000 square feet accessible by labyrinthine passageways, two elevators and secret stairs. Once down the rabbit hole, you’ll find a tennis court built to U.S. Open standards (the outdoor court meets French Open specs), a Moroccan-style Turkish bath, a chapel, an English library, nine bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. Seventeen years in the making, Hacienda de la Paz is the dream project of John Z. Blazevich, chief executive of Viva Food Group, a shrimp importer.
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It's a spacious, secure home that could probably fetch a pretty penny on today's NYC real estate market - the only problem is that no one knows if it still exists. The mystery centers around The Underground World Home, a 12,000-square-foot subterranean residence that was built for the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. After the fair ended, almost all of the exhibits were ordered to be demolished, but some think that the Underground Home's creator, Jay Swayze, may have left it intact. After all, why pay exorbitant demolition fees to remove the home when you could just tear down its above-ground pavilion and cover the entrance with some dirt? 50 years later, historians, students and regular Joes with shovels are still asking the question, "Is it down there?"
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Soon its name will join the ranks of Britain's great stately homes. Already, in the most elite of circles, it is being whispered in awe: 'Witanhurst. Do you know it?' The residents of London's Highgate certainly do, for this mammoth property has caused an ongoing row, as planners have repeatedly rejected lavish plans for its development. The Georgian-style mansion is London's second-largest private residence, after Buckingham Palace.But following a short-lived renaissance in 2002 as home to the BBC's Fame Academy, it had been allowed to decay. Now, the planning issues having been resolved, it is being turned into a modern-day Xanadu, the palatial mansion immortalised in the film Citizen Kane.The glittering 65-room palace will include 25 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms and an imperial walnut-panelled Grand Ballroom. A vast two-storey subterranean extension will almost double its size, making room for a 70ft swimming pool, sauna, hairdressing salon, massage parlour and a huge cinema suite. Diggers are carving an enormous cave beneath the house, which will make the property just 2,000 sq ft smaller than Buckingham Palace. Staff accommodation and a 25-space car park will complete the £50million expansion. Mystery shrouds the mansion, however. For despite being the size of ten generously sized detached homes, nobody knows who owns it.Indeed, it is said that even Robert Adam, the celebrated architect behind this extraordinary project, does not know who his client is. He receives his instructions via an intricate web of companies and advisers, designed to give the owner absolute anonymity.So just what is Witanhurst and who is behind it? It is perched above North London, on the verdant hill of Highgate, an ancient village that is one of the capital’s most sought-after addresses. Overlooking Hampstead Heath, the area once was home to the highwayman Dick Turpin, and philosopher Karl Marx is buried in the nearby Victorian cemetery.
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, David. It is, right? I only just discovered her stuff very recently, which seems very strange. From the squibs I read from Morrissey's novel, he seems to be a very deserving winner of that prize. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Gary's a very longtime friend and colleague or whatever you call mutually sympathetic writers of roughly the same age. My favorites of his novels are 'Do Everything in the Dark' and 'Gone Tomorrow'. But he's consistently worth reading, and he's a superb nonfiction writer/critic, so a collection of his essays and reviews is another good way in. Enjoy your portion of the encroaching wintriness. I'm into mine. So far. ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom. Oh, you're close-ish to there. I'm guessing that the ruins, which included this crazy great huge temple (to the sun?) are all gussied up and geared for tourists by now. Back in the '60s, they were just sitting there, lonesome and decrepit and seemingly forgotten, which was really special. Juan Villalobos ...hm, I don't know. I mean I know of his stuff, but I can't remember if I've ever read him. 'It's totally frenetic. Italicized frenetic.': That's definitely enough to get me in the door of his work. I'll head in his direction. Thank you bunches, Tom. ** Sypha, Hi. Thank you, thank you, thank you! ** Steevee, I've been getting headaches lately, and I've assumed it was the shift to cold and damp, so maybe that is the answer? ** H, Hi. I'm really glad you liked it. Oh my God, that meal you ate sounds so incredibly good. I just ate what I always eat, a veggie dog sandwiches feast. I need to go to a restaurant. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Wait, ... seriously? Well, the slave posts are taken directly from actual slave profiles, so, if that's true, that slave saw your poem somewhere and swiped it, which, of course, means he must be a pretty interesting slave. Huh. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Am I correct in thinking you might have seen the title of this post and gotten your quickly dashed hopes up that it was going to be a music post, ha ha? Apologies, if so. ** Bernard Welt, Hey, B-ster. Yes, I just saw that, like, half an hour ago. How cool and unexpected and nice of that guy. Interesting piece too. Everyone, There's this new and interesting article just up at the Electric Literature site called 'The Spatial Poetics of Nintendo: Architecture, Dennis Cooper, and Video Games' if you want to read it. No, I don't know that guy. I think I've read something(s) by him before, though. You were asking Bill about hauntology, right? I know a somewhat fair amount about the musical genre version that was identified and named, or 'borrow-named' perhaps, by Simon Reynolds and written a lot about by David Keenan, but not so much about the larger thing. Does that 'foremost researcher' have anything written/published that I can access, ideally online? I'm curious, no surprise. That panel sounds super interesting. Record it, or have someone do that, please. Love, me. ** Misanthrope, I'm sure I'll like it. What's not to theoretically like? Big is good, duh. EF Day is finished, so you can see what you think ... when ... Monday. Big congrats on the guardianship! It's gross and depressing that his mom doesn't care, but I guess I hope that she continues not to? God, what a fucked up situation. But congrats! I would guess that Gisele probably knows Reiniger's -- Google spellcheck really, really wants her name to be Reindeer -- work, but I'm seeing G. tonight, so I'll ask. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yes, the new Maddin was partly shot on a set in the basement of the Pompidou during/as part of the same Nouveau Festival where Gisele and I presented our 'Teenage Hallucination' mini-festival. So I got to watch a fair amount of it being filmed, which was cool. Poor Mr. Furlong has had considerable life and drug and relationship difficulties, it seems, and he, well, looks very different now, let's say. Poor guy. He's on the new Star Trek TV series, though, I think. ** Right. I got in one of my little obsessive things that usually result in related post, and this brief obsessive thing was about houses built underground, and I hope that there is at least some interest in that topic out there where you are. See you tomorrow.
A multi-millionaire plans to triple the size of his London mansion by digging down 50ft to create a four-storey basement complete with swimming pool, spa, ballroom and no fewer than 12 bedrooms. Architects’ drawings show how the vast house, originally built as a school in the 19th century, will be created by excavating deeper than the height of neighbouring homes. As well as the spa area, it will have servants’ quarters consisting of five staff bedrooms. There will also be wine cellars, an art storage room, parking for three vehicles and a car lift. Estate agents estimate the property could be worth up to £90million with the work completed. Neighbours who have objected to the plans include novelist Edna O’Brien and the Duchess of St Albans Gillian Beauclerk. The duchess said: ‘These plans are absolutely monstrous and unnecessary. It’s just absolute greed. No one needs that much space.’
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Just decrypted this blueprint of the White House from JFK’s term—it looks like he signed off on the construction of a secret safe room under the White House while Jackie O was renovating.
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A underground facility and bunker dubbed “The Facility” in Southeast Georgia two hours from Savannah just hit the market for $17.5 million. The property, which is exclusively listed by Sister Hood of Harry Norman, Realtors Buckhead Office, was built in 1969 and fully renovated to government standards in 2012. According to Harry Norman, it is the only hardened and privately owned underground bunker of its kind in the United States. The property features a commercial 3-Phase power plant, in addition to its own 8Kw new solar backup system. The facility is also equipped with a $100,000 CCTV security system.
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Worried about the end of the world? For those who can afford them, one company is creating subterranean housing complexes – modern-day super-bomb-shelters across the United States designed to survive any apocalyptic scenario yet imagined. Killer comets, pole shifts, super volcanoes, global tsunamis, extreme earthquakes, biological and nuclear war – each are scenarios supposedly covered in the design plans by Vivos of these luxury underground homes to be built in 120 locations in range of most major US cities.
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The Survive-a-Storm Max underground steel storm shelter is ideal for larger families or small businesses. Measuring 10-feet long by 6-feet wide, the Max Model can be buried in your yard in just a few hours. With its coal tar epoxy coating, you will receive the same protection against rust and corrosion as an underground gas storage tank or cross-country pipeline. This shelter has bench seating on three sides, with a stairway entering from the surface. We have even provided a steel handrail and non-slip stair treads for extra safety and convenience.
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Brett Jacobsen’s book Heaven’s Underground Blueprint has a twofold thrust: it is a prophetic work that paralells church history with Old Testament Israel, presenting insight into current happenings and great hope for the future. It also is instructive in the current reformation of the church into underground community.
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Have you ever heard about the guy who literally lived under a rock in the Californian desert, where legendary flying saucer conventions were held in the 1950s? We go back to the 1930s, when an eccentric German immigrant called Frank Critzer dug out this subterranean home for himself under the giant rock. He lived there alone, isolated from society with nothing but a radio antenna he set up on top of the rock to stay connected with the outside world. But in 1942, during a showdown with police who came to investigate rumours that he was in fact a Nazi spy, Frank died from a self-detonated dynamite explosion in his own bunker. Locals had reported strange behaviour, several incidents of Frank threatening trespassers with a shotgun and suspicion that he was a spy because of his radio antenna. After his death, Frank’s only friend, a former aircraft inspector named George Van Tassel, became the giant rock’s new tenant in 1947. In a few short years, George went from living a simple existence with his family in the rooms Frank Critzer had dug out under the Giant Rock, to building his own restaurant on the site, a small airstrip, and an extra-terrestrial research centre which would play host to his annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, attracting more than 11,000 people at its peak. The dome-shaped “Integraton” structure still survives today in Landers, California, near the Giant Rock but not as a pilgrimage site for ufologists. After Tassel’s death in 1978 there were plans to turn it into a disco. Instead, the new owners turned it into an 0ff-beat tourist attraction offering “sound baths”, claiming it to be “the only all-wood, acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.”
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After searching for photos for Hugh Hefner's upcoming April 9 birthday, the Playboy Mansion employee uncovered "some Polaroids from 1977 that showed a large excavation project at The Mansion." When the staff member inquired about the tunnels, the Mansion's general manager confirmed that Hefner had the tunnels built to connect the "bunnies" to celebrities' houses. The plans reference the homes of "Mr. J. Nicholson,""Mr. W. Beatty,""Mr. K. Douglas" and "Mr. J. Caan," which is enough information to distinguish the four highly recognizable monikers. All of the men lived near Hefner's world-renowned home during the '70s and '80s, so the underground maps could be legitimate. The tunnels were reportedly closed in 1989, around the same time Hefner married Playmate Kimberley Conrad, and, when asked, the general manager wouldn't disclose any more information about the hidden passageways.
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Plans to create a £70m dream mansion in the heart of Mayfair - complete with an underground leisure complex - have been submitted to planning bosses. At a huge 190-feet - more than half the size of a football pitch - the super-home could become the longest in London if plans are given the go-ahead. The 18th Century building on the corner of Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, will stretch all the way back so it incorporates the mews homes on Duke's Yard. It will boast large entertaining rooms, underground leisure facilities, luxury sleeping quarters, a courtyard and a price-tag of around £70 million. The hefty valuation is more than 250 times the price of an average home in the UK and around 450 times the average house price in the north east of England.
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I'm Burying My Camper
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The man who made a fortune out of building London's best known - and most controversial - estate agency and selling it for £390 million is planning an extraordinary subterranean playground at his home near Kensington Palace. Jon Hunt, founder of Foxtons, bought his Grade II-listed, eight-bedroom house in Kensington Palace Gardens - London's most expensive street - for £14 million in 2005. He now proposes to excavate a huge hole underneath the back garden, in which he wants to create a massive sports hall with viewing galleries. As well as a tennis court, pool and gym, the underground extension will also include a private “motor museum”, accessed from the road through a special ramp, for his multi-million pound collection of six vintage Ferraris. The excavation will be 50 ft deep, equivalent to at least four stories in height.
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This decommissioned military base complex turned silo home-in-a-hole is anything but Top Secret today. Its owners boast the set of converted structures to be the “world’s most unique luxury home. The subterranean launch control center is a cylinder surrounded by an epoxy-resin, steel-reinforced, three-foot-thick structural wall that (particularly given its depth in the ground) is essentially as apocalypse-proof as a home gets. The entire structure is suspended on springs to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast. Forget blueprints and standard floor plans: this historic house comes with its own top-secret, government-certified schematics. 2.3 million dollars might sound like a lot – even for a high-end mansion – but if you consider that the original cost of construction was around ten times that much (in 1950s dollars, without accounting for inflation) the current converted property seems a steal by comparison. Oh, and their FAQ page points out that the Russians are well aware that the silo has been decommissioned, so presumably they would no longer consider it a primary target should an all-out world war come along.
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You wouldn’t happen to be in the market for a 1970s underground family home, equipped to live in for up to a year without resurfacing in the event of a nuclear missile strike that wipes out humanity, would ya? Because it just so happens one has just come onto the market. And this piece of real estate gold could be all yours for the bargain price of $1.7 million. The subterranean Las Vegas home at 3970 Spencer St. near Flamingo Road boasts a 15,200-square-foot basement beneath a two story home above ground. From the street, number 3970 looks like any other American home, except with a few extra ventilation and air conditioning units planted around the yard. Camouflaged by clusters of rocks, an entrance with an elevator takes you down to the underground lair. Another stairway is hidden inside a shed. The house was built in 1978 to withstand a nuclear blast by an arguably ‘paranoid’ wealthy businessman, Girard “Jerry” B. Henderson. The ambitious homeowner made his fortune with several companies including Avon cosmetics and Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
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KC, MO Area: $479,000.00 or OBO Comes with almost all the furniture and decor. Hardened Underground Bunker-Home on 10.5 acres/ml. A 1960s nuclear war-proof communication center, 10,700 sq. ft of usable floor space and can easily be expanded to much more, 2 ft thick concrete walls and ceilings, 3-4 ft of graded earth over the top, copper shielding against EMP, 2- 2,000 lb blast doors, 8 air vents with filtration and blast valve closure mechanisms. Water well on site with a new pump, 10,000 gallon underground stainless steel water storage tank, Aquasana Water Filtration System, escape hatch emergency exit, 177 ft tower that can be used for Hamm Radio or even possible cell tower. Lighting, pumps, heating, dehumidification and electric hoist operational. New water pipes and new aluminum roof on entry building. Occupied continuously for the last 5 years, the current owners remodeled much of the structure creating a two-story living space that includes a functional kitchen, bathroom, shower, large living room with a new electric fireplace, 4-6 bedrooms depending on use/needs, gym with equipment (treadmill, 2 bikes and workout machines), sound proof music studio with vocal/recording booth and connected storage room, very large 16 ft ceiling recreation area, other living and storage areas. All VERY NICELY done. Commercial zoning, low property tax. Ready to move in. Contact through Email if interested! Serious Purchasing Inquiries ONLY!
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A creepy graveyard complete with a decaying crypt. Inside the crypt are steps leading down to a mysterious underground house (unfurnished.) The lot size is 2x3. This lot contains the following custom content created by myself: 5 original mesh gravestones (Find in decorative/ sculpture. They can be placed anywhere indoors or outdoors.) 3 spooky trees - one being the Maxis spooky tree except it can be placed on floor tiles. The other two are derived from Maxis trees with texture/shape changed. (Find all in decorative/sculpture. They can be placed anywhere indoors or outdoors.) 9 floor textures, including a dead grass texture for floor tiles. 2 terrain textures, including a matching dead grass texture. 21 wall textures, many of them multiple tile textures. The house is not furnished. The one issue with this underground house is that objects that have to be placed against walls can't be placed against the exterior walls unless you use the "moveobjects on" cheat. I have a furnished version in my game and I found that I didn't need to use the cheat at all. All interior walls work as usual. The cost of this lot is approximately 27,000.
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This Minecraft underground house/base design/ideas build tutorial on Xbox, PE, PS3, and or PC is very easy to do and looks really great anywhere in your world.
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The author of this plan speculated on building this spherical city in Manhattan bedrock—a structure which so far as I can determine would have a volume of 1.2 cubic miles (5 km3) with its top beginning some 1,200’ under Times Square […] Newman published this in 1969 (?!) after somehow latching onto the idea of clearing out massive underground caverns with nuclear explosions—in this case, the space would be hollowed out under Manhattan. The underground sphere would be a miniature version of whatever was above it—along the medial there would be a “topside” of a regular city with streets and high rise buildings, underneath which would exist an underground city for the underground city. In this honeycomb would exist the means of production and energy, segmented in multi-block-sized enclosures of no charm.
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A luxurious underground mansion is being built beneath the grounds of Limehurst, a Victorian property converted into flats. The entrance to the two-storey, three-bedroom mansion, named the Earth House, is a front door disguised as a 2.6m-high garden folly, leading to a central spiral staircase down to the main hallway and living area on the lower ground floor. 'I am confident that this house in Bowdon will become an architectural landmark - albeit one that most people will never see.'
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While each risk situation is unique and requires a methodical threat assessment tailored to the client's needs, the experience of the Hardened Structures Team across the spectrum of threats has enabled us to design a modular, configurable system that enables survivability in even the most demanding scenarious. Called the Genesis Series, this underground shelter system provides protection against a wide range of disasters including 2012 scenarios. For protecting your family or family group, the Genesis Series is unmatched in the industry.
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This astonishing planning document illustrates why the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea has decided to outlaw the super-sized basement extensions that local billionaires seem so fond of. The multi-level subterranean recreation areas often go far beyond the boundaries of the aboveground properties, and have cracked walls and even affected the foundations of neighboring houses. In a famous case from 2012, excavation work under the mansion of a Goldmann Sachs director resulted in his neighbor getting trapped inside her home, unable to open her front door since it had shifted so much. A cabinet member for planning policy told The Guardian that basement extensions are "the single greatest planning concern our residents have expressed to us in living memory."
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I ran into the Hal B. Hayes residence, formerly in Hollywood, California, which Popular Mechanics Magazine described as a House For the Atomic Age. Ever practical, the magazine notes how Mr. Hayes designed the house to withstand or flex against the stresses of an atomic bomb blast. The outer walls are “fluted to resist shock waves” and the large front glass window, pictured above, will sweep away in the same blast. There is a secret underground sanctuary accessed only by swimming underwater, as well as another hidden underground room equipped with bottled oxygen.
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This was my underground home before the criminals at the DEPI demolished it.
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Like something straight from a science fiction or horror movie scene, this underground nuclear missile silo was once a dank, dark and deserted structure of interest to no one – until man saw past the pooled water and cracked concrete and began to build by hand the ultimate underground dream house for himself in the family. Occupying only a third of the nearly 20,000 available square feet of total military base, Ed Peden and his family live in a world of weird wonder purchased for a relative pittance at $48,000 and derelict for decades when he went to buy it. On the surface, former escape hatches now look like castle turrets and a shack-like structure is about all there is to mark the entrance to this domain.
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You may have heard stories about people renovating their homes, only to stumble upon a secret room. Perhaps it’s a play room? A cellar? A place to stash sensitive documents and treasures? All that mystery can be pretty scary yet exciting. But back in 1963, a resident of Nevşehir Province of Turkey found a secret room behind one of his walls. This secret room led to a tunnel ... which led to an incredible discovery: the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu is not the largest nor oldest underground city. But at 18 stories, it is the deepest.
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World was so much different back in the 60’s and fears and terror from Cold War was almost part of people’s everyday life. During that period, a businessman and philanthropist named Girard B. Henderson spent quite a lot of money for a project he called The Underground Home. From ground level, you would see a house. But it was not the house. It was just its entrance. There were obviously some stairs to take you down. There was even a control panel to control and adjust temperatures and radiation (yes…we are talking about nuclear holocaust, remember?)
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Wrecking ball destroys underground safe room
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From the outside, it looks like an elegant Spanish-style ranch house but Hacienda de la Paz in L.A.’s Palos Verdes Peninsula is so much more than that. The $53 million mansion, which recently went to market, meets local building codes in the posh, gated city of Rolling Hills by keeping to one story. But those rules don’t say a word about building underground. What’s not visible from the street are five magnificent subterranean levels on 50,000 square feet accessible by labyrinthine passageways, two elevators and secret stairs. Once down the rabbit hole, you’ll find a tennis court built to U.S. Open standards (the outdoor court meets French Open specs), a Moroccan-style Turkish bath, a chapel, an English library, nine bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. Seventeen years in the making, Hacienda de la Paz is the dream project of John Z. Blazevich, chief executive of Viva Food Group, a shrimp importer.
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It's a spacious, secure home that could probably fetch a pretty penny on today's NYC real estate market - the only problem is that no one knows if it still exists. The mystery centers around The Underground World Home, a 12,000-square-foot subterranean residence that was built for the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. After the fair ended, almost all of the exhibits were ordered to be demolished, but some think that the Underground Home's creator, Jay Swayze, may have left it intact. After all, why pay exorbitant demolition fees to remove the home when you could just tear down its above-ground pavilion and cover the entrance with some dirt? 50 years later, historians, students and regular Joes with shovels are still asking the question, "Is it down there?"
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Soon its name will join the ranks of Britain's great stately homes. Already, in the most elite of circles, it is being whispered in awe: 'Witanhurst. Do you know it?' The residents of London's Highgate certainly do, for this mammoth property has caused an ongoing row, as planners have repeatedly rejected lavish plans for its development. The Georgian-style mansion is London's second-largest private residence, after Buckingham Palace.But following a short-lived renaissance in 2002 as home to the BBC's Fame Academy, it had been allowed to decay. Now, the planning issues having been resolved, it is being turned into a modern-day Xanadu, the palatial mansion immortalised in the film Citizen Kane.The glittering 65-room palace will include 25 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms and an imperial walnut-panelled Grand Ballroom. A vast two-storey subterranean extension will almost double its size, making room for a 70ft swimming pool, sauna, hairdressing salon, massage parlour and a huge cinema suite. Diggers are carving an enormous cave beneath the house, which will make the property just 2,000 sq ft smaller than Buckingham Palace. Staff accommodation and a 25-space car park will complete the £50million expansion. Mystery shrouds the mansion, however. For despite being the size of ten generously sized detached homes, nobody knows who owns it.Indeed, it is said that even Robert Adam, the celebrated architect behind this extraordinary project, does not know who his client is. He receives his instructions via an intricate web of companies and advisers, designed to give the owner absolute anonymity.So just what is Witanhurst and who is behind it? It is perched above North London, on the verdant hill of Highgate, an ancient village that is one of the capital’s most sought-after addresses. Overlooking Hampstead Heath, the area once was home to the highwayman Dick Turpin, and philosopher Karl Marx is buried in the nearby Victorian cemetery.
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, David. It is, right? I only just discovered her stuff very recently, which seems very strange. From the squibs I read from Morrissey's novel, he seems to be a very deserving winner of that prize. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Gary's a very longtime friend and colleague or whatever you call mutually sympathetic writers of roughly the same age. My favorites of his novels are 'Do Everything in the Dark' and 'Gone Tomorrow'. But he's consistently worth reading, and he's a superb nonfiction writer/critic, so a collection of his essays and reviews is another good way in. Enjoy your portion of the encroaching wintriness. I'm into mine. So far. ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom. Oh, you're close-ish to there. I'm guessing that the ruins, which included this crazy great huge temple (to the sun?) are all gussied up and geared for tourists by now. Back in the '60s, they were just sitting there, lonesome and decrepit and seemingly forgotten, which was really special. Juan Villalobos ...hm, I don't know. I mean I know of his stuff, but I can't remember if I've ever read him. 'It's totally frenetic. Italicized frenetic.': That's definitely enough to get me in the door of his work. I'll head in his direction. Thank you bunches, Tom. ** Sypha, Hi. Thank you, thank you, thank you! ** Steevee, I've been getting headaches lately, and I've assumed it was the shift to cold and damp, so maybe that is the answer? ** H, Hi. I'm really glad you liked it. Oh my God, that meal you ate sounds so incredibly good. I just ate what I always eat, a veggie dog sandwiches feast. I need to go to a restaurant. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Wait, ... seriously? Well, the slave posts are taken directly from actual slave profiles, so, if that's true, that slave saw your poem somewhere and swiped it, which, of course, means he must be a pretty interesting slave. Huh. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Am I correct in thinking you might have seen the title of this post and gotten your quickly dashed hopes up that it was going to be a music post, ha ha? Apologies, if so. ** Bernard Welt, Hey, B-ster. Yes, I just saw that, like, half an hour ago. How cool and unexpected and nice of that guy. Interesting piece too. Everyone, There's this new and interesting article just up at the Electric Literature site called 'The Spatial Poetics of Nintendo: Architecture, Dennis Cooper, and Video Games' if you want to read it. No, I don't know that guy. I think I've read something(s) by him before, though. You were asking Bill about hauntology, right? I know a somewhat fair amount about the musical genre version that was identified and named, or 'borrow-named' perhaps, by Simon Reynolds and written a lot about by David Keenan, but not so much about the larger thing. Does that 'foremost researcher' have anything written/published that I can access, ideally online? I'm curious, no surprise. That panel sounds super interesting. Record it, or have someone do that, please. Love, me. ** Misanthrope, I'm sure I'll like it. What's not to theoretically like? Big is good, duh. EF Day is finished, so you can see what you think ... when ... Monday. Big congrats on the guardianship! It's gross and depressing that his mom doesn't care, but I guess I hope that she continues not to? God, what a fucked up situation. But congrats! I would guess that Gisele probably knows Reiniger's -- Google spellcheck really, really wants her name to be Reindeer -- work, but I'm seeing G. tonight, so I'll ask. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yes, the new Maddin was partly shot on a set in the basement of the Pompidou during/as part of the same Nouveau Festival where Gisele and I presented our 'Teenage Hallucination' mini-festival. So I got to watch a fair amount of it being filmed, which was cool. Poor Mr. Furlong has had considerable life and drug and relationship difficulties, it seems, and he, well, looks very different now, let's say. Poor guy. He's on the new Star Trek TV series, though, I think. ** Right. I got in one of my little obsessive things that usually result in related post, and this brief obsessive thing was about houses built underground, and I hope that there is at least some interest in that topic out there where you are. See you tomorrow.