January 19, 2007

View Comments | Post Comment

The Hidden Chambers And Passageways Of My Real Estate Dreams

I've always dreamt of having secret chambers and passageways in my house. I always wanted to pull some candlestick, or select just the right book from the shelf in order for a doorway to appear in the wall, or the wall itself to rotate, or the back of the fireplace to open up and reveal a rough-hewn stone staircase leading down to some hidden room. A thousand times I've noticed some random appointment in a house and wondered what action I might perform on it in order to activate a secret mechanism. Rotate the bust on the mantle to just the right angle, flip down a picture frame, lift a certain bottle, a certain sequence of flips of a lamp's switch...

My friend Chris and I were discussing this yesterday. He eventually wants a recording studio in his house. That's cool, and I'd love to have one, too. But what I really want is for my house to have lore. I want there to be arcane knowledge associated with it; symbology and mysteries and clues to be deciphered. Secrets that I take to the grave. If I ever have the means--either financial or industrial--to make my castle of secrets a reality, I would consider my life to have been a success. I've always liked the idea of designing my own house. I've done it tons of times, planning out which rooms I'd have, and where. But I've never planned out an entire design with all the secret stuff.

I think I can trace my fascination with the idea of secret rooms and halls back to a few discrete sources:

  • Goblins In The Castle, a children's book by Bruce Coville, author of the also awesome Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, and the whole My Teacher Is An Alien series. In Goblins In The Castle, the titular castle is full of crazy secrets, and I really loved this book the first time I read it when I was quite young. I'm fairly certain that this was the beginning of my fascination.
  • Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade: At some point, I think it's in Vienna (it's been years since I saw the movie), Indy ends up in some secret interrogation room tied to a chair along with his father, Sean Connery Jones. While struggling to get free from a fire I think they trip some mechanism and the wall rotates, exposing them to a whole room of Nazi soldiers. This was always one of my favorite movies, and was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw. I had seen a preview and told my parents that I really wanted to see it. I was maybe six. I still remember their conversation. Mom told my father that it was PG-13 and that I'm usually not allowed to see PG-13 movies. Dad said, "Aw, it's Indiana Jones. They're just fun. I'm sure he'd be fine seeing an Indiana Jones movie. The others weren't even that violent." Mom then said, "Not that violent? Ripping out people's hearts from their chests while they're still beating?" In any case, Dad won that one, probably because Mom also wanted to see it herself.
  • The Hobbit: This book seriously changed my life. Read it the first time in second grade. I was sick at school, so my Dad picked me up and brought me to his office. But I was bored, so we walked to the grocery store next door and he told me to select a book from their not-so-generous book section. In what was the single most lucky thing in my entire life, I selected The Hobbit, and devoured it voraciously at the quickest pace my seven year-old mind could muster (which ended up being about three weeks of near-constant reading). Anyway, the arcane stuff in The Hobbit really caught me. Like when they're up on the Lonely Mountain camped out, wondering how to get inside. "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole." Or later when I read Lord Of The Rings, "Speak friend, and enter." How can you not love that stuff? It had quite an effect on little me.

The funny part about my desire to have all that hidden stuff in my house is that I have no interest in actually keeping anything about them secret. I know that I couldn't resist showing off my hidden mechanisms, and daring friends to guess which book reveals the door, or behind which picture frame is the key. In fact, I have no desire to keep any of it secret at all. I just think all those hidden rooms and corridors would be super cool to have. "Honey, I'm gonna be in my study. That's the Thoreau, if you need me."

Posted at January 19, 2007 4:39 AM | Comments (2)


Comments

Post a new comment


I ALWAYS wanted a secret passageway in my house. I think the idea first came from Clue and was then supported by some mansion on a TV show my mom watched in the 80s... When I was grade school, we went through a model home in a new subdivision where there was a bookcase in the study that opened like a door into the master bedroom. I thought it was so cool, but years later, I have been in a similar house, and it just seems kind of silly because the master bedroom isn't that much farther away if you use the regular doors - and there aren't really a lot of times when you would need to go from the study to the bedroom that quickly.

Even so...I still think secret passages are cool.

Posted by: Cara at January 22, 2007 10:37 PM


Yeah, I don't want the lame ones like that, where it's just an alternate entrance to what is a totally non-secret room that is right next to the room you're in. It needs at least to have a bit more misdirection than that. If not hidden rooms, then at least corridors to other parts of the house.

Posted by: Barzelay at January 23, 2007 1:27 AM

Post a new comment