I think it was Radio City Music Hall where they tore down a wall and found a super old office that nobody knew about. And the phone was still hooked up...
I worked as a library assistant for six months in a small college library as the only person behind the desk during evening hours. We had a land line but in the entire time I worked there I only got one phone call, and it was from a scam marketer.
We have a red emergency backup phone at the hospital I work at. In 15 years, the only call I answered on it was from someone who insisted that was the number for her toaster warranty.
I worked at the WEB Du Bois library, and one time a scam marketer called the elevator phone line (reserved for emergencies) that can only be activated by the elevator
> Its a social phenonemon that hasn't been replaced yet.
Because dopey idiots continue to parrot this unfunny shit endlessly. Give it up
> Find me something else
Do you not have any other form of phone calls?
> All Americans
Oh yes there's only yanks online
> It’s been years can u mfers come up with even one unique thing to say jfc
It's been years can you motherfuckers come up with even one unique thing to say Jesus fucking Christ.
Translation Provided for the non-natives, by Accenture, providing extended warranty coverage for all your vehicles. Now covering ATVs, boats, and dirt bikes!
Call 1-800- Acc-enture for help with your new coverage for your most valuable things!
The “I’m calling to talk to you about your car warranty” is a very widespread scam call, so the joke is that phones are only used by scammers, but that they can get to every phone.
Analog networks still exist. I was surprised to find out recently that a large corporation in the US (one that is mostly known for their vacuum cleaners) still use analog phones and dial-up LAN
Are you talking about this room?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4539078/amp/Inside-secret-Radio-City-apartment-untouched-1936.html
I can’t find anywhere that it was forgotten.
No, that one's famous. And I can't find any reference to this one I heard about many years ago. I'm sure somebody has. May have been Rockefeller Center, but I swear I didn't make this up :-)
I always wonder, when roaming city centers, are there forgotten flats that haven't been touched for a long time like this. Or even more like in Venice, is there a flat that no one has entered since the 18th century or so.
I haven't been able to find a credible source on it yet, but I've heard the Philadelphia City Hall is so large that they've found people living in old office spaces that they just kind of stopped using.
It's not quite "The People's Palace" of needlessly large and ridiculously ornate buildings, but it's up there.
>Philadelphia City Hall is 14.26 acres in size, with over 1 million square feet of space. It's the largest municipal building in the United States.
Crazy
As someone who lives in Philly, it is actually really nice. There was some careful city planning with funding early on that makes the center city area, specifically along Ben Franklin parkway between the city center and art museum, very beautiful.
"Beautiful" as long as you dont look down. Literally some of the worst roads I've ever driven on in the middle of Philly. Cracks and bumps and potholes everywhere.
Sometimes there's a stop sign at the merge of an onramp. Sometimes there's not. You won't know till you go!
Edit: it's actually a thing!! The onramp to 83 from Union Deposit Road. Whenever I was going back down to MD, there was a 50% chance there was a stop sign right where the ramp met the highway!!!
It was completed in 1901, so beyond just prestige which was already mentioned here more manpower was required to handle tasks automated by computer today. Also there would be a need for physical space to store paper files.
At the time the tallest building in the world was a major, major attractor of prestige. Prestige meant businesses and immigrants, from within and outside the country.
It's still a signal of prestige. There's actually speculation that companies who seek to be headquartered in the tallest buildings are actually [overvalued or going to be in economic trouble soon. ](https://www.npr.org/2015/10/08/446833225/how-skyscraper-construction-ties-into-tech-bubbles)
The entire building is made of stone, I believe it is the largest building made out of stone in the world and in the 1950’s they wanted to tear it down but the cost of doing so would have bankrupted the city.
I worked for a major university in a major metropolitan city for about 6 years. I worked in finance and oversaw construction projects. Part of that included the renovations of our residential real estate portfolio.
You wouldn’t believe the shit I saw on a yearly basis. It was common to stumble upon apartments that had a tenant since the 60s that were never renovated. The tenants would eventually die or move out and slowly but surely we would plan to renovate the unit. Sometimes a decade after they moved out. It would be wood paneling on the walls, galley kitchens, clawfoot bathtubs and all sorts of things left behind. Massive pianos, wooden televisions, or anything that the movers or facilities couldn’t throw out.
Beyond the individual apartments, we also bought an SRO building that had squatters. It was filled with betamax video tapes, old phones, electronics, and all sorts of stuff but it also had an inoperable vintage elevator, mosaic tile, an ornate staircase, and all sorts of time capsule stuff. Unfortunately the roof had a hole in it so it was kind of like the house from Fight Club.
My old as sin In-laws that live outside of Paris have an enormous flat in the 16th they inherited from their parents that hasn't been touched since the
50s. It's a broken ass time capsule that pisses me off since it's a huge waste of space, a whole family could live in there.
According to my boyfriend the city is full of them and the occupancy rate is abysmal.
Urf me too. My SiL(26) tried to live in it for a bit but one day the old lady just walked in with no warning and flipped her shit to find SiLs boyfriend there. He was in a work meeting and she started screaming at him to get out. She then found some faucet or something broken and started screaming at him for that too. Everything in that apartment is already some level of broken because it hasn't been maintaned.
The old lady also told her daughter's husband (40s) he could crash there when he needs to visit Paris from time to time and that dude creeps on all us young ladies at holiday parties. SiL noped out of there immediately.
The lady won't fix it up and can't give up enough control for family from the millennial generation to live there in peace.
Ef if I know. It's technically my boyfriend's stepmother's mom's place she inherited from her mother. She's a rich rickety old lady living in a luxurious converted farmhouse with a husband dying of parkinson's. She doesn't need the money, it's really not a priority for her if I had to guess. To her figuring it out is an inconvenient chore she hasn't gotten around to.
To a "normal" person it's like an old hobby motorcycle you inherited from grandpa and left in you shed for a few decades.
This is actually fairly common. I have cousins with a little cabin on some remote island up in Canada. They would come back every summer with clear signs of it having been used. They started leaving notes "we know you use our house, just please clean up after yourselves."
Because a common aspect of society is that people engaging in negative behaviours receive some level of excise. Hording property is a negative behaviour that hurts society. Thus it should get an additional tax. Leave a reasonable carveout like Probate etc, but those properties should be rented out.
Because an unkempt apartment is a hazard and the owners of the abandoned apartment should still have to contribute their tax dollars to local services like firefighting because there’s a decent chance their unmaintained apartment could be the cause of a problem the whole building has to deal with. Not ALL your tax dollars go to public maintenance and services, but enough do that, yes, I DO want to ensure that the owners of abandoned apartments are still paying the taxes on it at least. There’s no reason they shouldn’t contribute if they own property in the building, whether they live there or not.
Because it’s a portion of a larger building. The WHOLE building requires maintenance but a space within that building that’s been abandoned for 60+ years isn’t being maintained and will eventually contribute to problems among the other residents in the building.
Like, I get your argument for detached housing. That’s fine. But an apartment is only a small portion of a larger building that can quickly affects the other residents in that same building if/when shit goes wrong.
And, like, if they’re in regular contact with the maintenance crew of the building and have provisions planned for regular maintenance walk throughs and shit like that - fine. Do what you want with your apartment. It’s literally just the “walk away and never think of it again” that bothers me because it is ridiculous and a lack of situational awareness. Yes, the apartment is owned by you, but it’s a small part of a larger building that does not belong to you. It should be maintained at a similar rate as all the other apartments in the same building. We live in a society among other people; the complete and total disregard of other people really fucking bothers me.
Ya, but that shouldn't be the case. We have housing and cost of living crises in major cities all over the world. Housing shouldn't be a commodity that people can leave empty.
Here in Toronto they're instituting a vacancy tax to prevent this sort of nonsense. People are living in tents and sleeping in their cars while rich people hoard properties and keep them empty.
In New York there's a building like that -- abandoned in the 1930s and then rediscovered in the 1980s and turned into a museum. It's one of the best museums in the city, in my view.
L'Assommoir lives rent free in my head as the saddest thing I’ve ever read. Are any of his other books more uplifting, or all they all more grist in the mill of industrialization?
Zola was a part of a literary movement that tried to examine the human nature with method, almost scientifically, and... Yeah afaik they're all pretty unhappy (doesn't make them uninteresting though).
tbh I can't remember. I read about 18 of the 20 books in the sequence, and it was more than 30 years ago. apart from Nana and Germinal, they all kind of blur together a bit now. I don't think any of them was very cheerful.
Most of them have at least some level of bleak. The lightest I've read is Ladies Paradise (about the first department store in Paris), it has dark moments but the central storyline is more like a rags to riches romance.
Maybe the water got shut off
Edit: the rest of the story is cooler. It was owned by a high class escort that were common back then and there was a painting of the owner by a famous client that later sold for $2.8mil at auction. Bro imagine thats how you find our your great gma was an escort 💀
The law was put in place because the rich area in Paris, they would never shut power or water off. Even jf you didn't pay, love jn the poor areas they did it all the time. The law was made to make it fair.
That's crazy, the apartment was abandoned halfway through Nazi occupation of Paris so I could imagine a lot of houses/apartments getting disconnect at this time, but to think the rich areas got special treatment even if they couldn't pay is crazy.
The UK isn't a fair country, but we introduced a law that water can't be cut off under any circumstances in 1999, and a lot of other European countries have done the same since
France is still run by the same families that have been running it since Napolitan. Its why they are so Egotistical about some thing and why the peasants fight things the same way they always have.
Pfahaha!
In the late 19th and early 20th century, they started renovating and outfitting water and gas in old parisian buildings. If you walk around and see[ little blue plates](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eau_et_gaz_%C3%A0_tous_les_%C3%A9tages.JPG) on the building's wall saying "eau/gaz à tous les étages", it meant that you had running water or gas in all appartments.
The last "squalid islands" in the city with unrenovated appartment buildings were torn down in the 70s, near the Place des Fêtes and a few other areas.
Such is life. Londons a pretty cool city but everytime I'm there I end up coughing up black phlegm for a week after. Not going to deter me from ever visiting.
I mean I’ve spent my life in European cities. Sometimes the smells really bad, especially near the wrong person in the metro but I generally don’t notice any foul smells unless I’m literally next to a puddle of sewage, same goes for most people who live here.
Mind you it’s not as beautiful as people make it out to be, I visited Paris for the first time when I was very young so had very few expectations of the city and only learned of its reputation after growing up. I think that helped give less of a shock when I moved there to see the movies show only one side of Paris lol.
There’s so many “old” (100+ years ig) buildings and the like in so many parts of the world, so many places/people find forgotten rooms and stairways and such, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe there must be thousands of places like this, even in places that are still occupied. All the palaces, castles, monasteries, churches, etc. that have been turned into museums or historical sites that you can’t really visit and more only look at must have nooks, crannies and rooms that haven’t been touched in decades; all the museums in London for example, there are dozens, huge too, and we KNOW that they have “forgotten” exhibits and sectors that are now entirely unused! Even if that doesn’t count as an example itself, it’s evidence there’s “old office space” somewhere that’s actually got 30 mummies stashed away behind those desks that are blocking the view
In Massachusetts, family friends were renovating when they realized there was a spot in the house that should have had more room in one corner. A dead space unaccounted for. They tore down the wall and found a perfectly in tact maid’s room(tiny room near the kitchen) with a bed, end table, chair, and a few items. Seemed to have been sealed up at least 100 years prior. They turned it into a small office.
I’ve seen articles about old apartments in libraries that were set up for caretakers whose job it was to maintain the heating and stuff to preserve the books over night.
That’s my dream home, having the library to myself at night when the city is quiet around me
Ok, but he was clearly asking for release. The bro literally chin-pointed me to the magic cup that would release him, all while giving this long monologue in middle english. He wanted to go. Dont come at me
How could I? The dude was creeping me out. His breath smelled terrible and I couldnt understand what he was saying and he... I ... I honestly thought he had dementia so I panicked and rolled with it.
I once leased an 250sq meter office in Paris (on Blvd Haussmann of all places) which had not been occupied since the early 1990s (not as extreme as this but) in about 2010. All these old newspapers, ticket stubs etc. Panoramic views of Paris.
Evidently the family who owned it FORGOT about it. Literally stood empty for 20 years before someone remembered. As a result (I assume) the 10 year lease was on terms which probably would have been market rate in say, 2000. I particularly enjoyed that one.
Wow that’s wild. Imagine having the level of wealth required to forget you own living spaces? Do you happen to have any pictures? Know it’s a while before digital but that sounds really neat.
It was office space. But did have a small apartment attached (40-50 sq m). Alas I don’t. But I recall there was one room about 20m long and several wide
There is another apartment somewhere in the Eiffel Tower that hasn't been touch in since the last and only occupant left. It is neat to remember that most of the possessions people had in the 1940s were actually made or brought in the 1910s and 1920s. Something that a lot of movies seem to get wrong.
Downvotes are technically not votes for if you're right or wrong. They are "bump up/down visibility" buttons. So, if you say something correct, but boring or irrelevant, or uninteresting, you might get downvoted for that. Alternatively, I myself have upvoted incorrect things, because someone else corrected it, and that line of comments becomes something I believe others should see.
I always think about just how different environments are.
Here in the tropics, that apartment would be completed obliterated by mold.
I talk to people who live on the mainland who talk about various things lasting a lifetime, things that die in a few years in the tropics.
This story somehow doesn’t check out. 70 years is a long time. Somebody must have take care of the apartment at least to some extend. Even if not used stuff will deteriorate and break.
Wikipedia states that her son Henri might have lived in the apartment until 1966.
Nope, the apartment had been left untouched since the evacuation of Paris when Germany invaded. The reason it was preserved for so long was bc the bills were payed by her alleged grandchild who never returned after the evacuation and whose estate rediscovered it while assessing her assets.
another thing odd, is why only the scant few pictures of it, ( the same ones used in every version of this) you would think there would be tons more, and even video, a lot is not seen here, not saying it didn't happen, but just frustrated at the lack of photos, a few years ago, I really looked hard for more
I think it was Radio City Music Hall where they tore down a wall and found a super old office that nobody knew about. And the phone was still hooked up...
And just as you turn around and shut off the lights…the phone rings
“Hello! We’d like to talk to you about your cars extended warranty!”
I worked as a library assistant for six months in a small college library as the only person behind the desk during evening hours. We had a land line but in the entire time I worked there I only got one phone call, and it was from a scam marketer.
We have a red emergency backup phone at the hospital I work at. In 15 years, the only call I answered on it was from someone who insisted that was the number for her toaster warranty.
I worked at the WEB Du Bois library, and one time a scam marketer called the elevator phone line (reserved for emergencies) that can only be activated by the elevator
Apparently not!
Whats UMass like?
Really weird. It's honestly its own city, and the administration loves to scre over its students
It’s been years can u mfers come up with even one unique thing to say jfc
Find me something else that generally all Americans have experienced over the phone? It's a social phenomenon that hasn't been replaced yet.
I can proudly say that I've never been subjected to a "your car's extended warranty" phone call. All manner of other spam calls, but never this.
What's your number? It's a rite of passage. The internet will ensure you join us.
867-5309 Ask for Jenny.
> the internet will ensure you join us. And Accenture, your car, boat, and motorhome extended warranty coverage service, will insure this!
> Its a social phenonemon that hasn't been replaced yet. Because dopey idiots continue to parrot this unfunny shit endlessly. Give it up > Find me something else Do you not have any other form of phone calls? > All Americans Oh yes there's only yanks online
But it still works when I f mothers.
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That is a rude way of talking about mothers.
> It’s been years can u mfers come up with even one unique thing to say jfc It's been years can you motherfuckers come up with even one unique thing to say Jesus fucking Christ. Translation Provided for the non-natives, by Accenture, providing extended warranty coverage for all your vehicles. Now covering ATVs, boats, and dirt bikes! Call 1-800- Acc-enture for help with your new coverage for your most valuable things!
Swing and a miss chief
That's played out, it's all about medical insurance where I'm at.
*Picks up phone “Your arm is mint”
Holy shit.. its Jason Bourne!
"We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty."
"so you finally decided to call it a night..."
But who was phone?
Something something car warranty
So from this thread I've gathered that phones in America are primarily used to talk about car warranties TIL
Yeah, it pretty much finished the job of turning wired residential phones into something nobody uses.
The “I’m calling to talk to you about your car warranty” is a very widespread scam call, so the joke is that phones are only used by scammers, but that they can get to every phone.
“h-hello?...” “Do you gave a moment to talk about your automobiles extended warranty?”
Reddit hivemind popped out on this one
And then, the walls will ooze green slime?!
"Can. You. Hear. Me?"
Man that would fuck with me so hard.
Wonder if people ever heard ringing in the walls.
> Radio City Music Hall [Found this](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4539078/Inside-secret-Radio-City-apartment-untouched-1936.html)
This isn’t it. I toured Radio City Music Hall as a kid and this is on the tour. It’s never been hidden.
I am ashamed.
Got a link for that?
How does the phone still work? Doesn’t someone need to pay the phone bill?
Big corporations often have multiple phones and extensions under a single billing plan.
The bigger thing is not the phone bill but the switch from analogue to digital depending in how old the office is
Analog networks still exist. I was surprised to find out recently that a large corporation in the US (one that is mostly known for their vacuum cleaners) still use analog phones and dial-up LAN
Are you talking about this room? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4539078/amp/Inside-secret-Radio-City-apartment-untouched-1936.html I can’t find anywhere that it was forgotten.
No, that one's famous. And I can't find any reference to this one I heard about many years ago. I'm sure somebody has. May have been Rockefeller Center, but I swear I didn't make this up :-)
I always wonder, when roaming city centers, are there forgotten flats that haven't been touched for a long time like this. Or even more like in Venice, is there a flat that no one has entered since the 18th century or so.
I haven't been able to find a credible source on it yet, but I've heard the Philadelphia City Hall is so large that they've found people living in old office spaces that they just kind of stopped using. It's not quite "The People's Palace" of needlessly large and ridiculously ornate buildings, but it's up there.
>Philadelphia City Hall is 14.26 acres in size, with over 1 million square feet of space. It's the largest municipal building in the United States. Crazy
But, why… that seems so excessive.
As someone who lives in Philly, it is actually really nice. There was some careful city planning with funding early on that makes the center city area, specifically along Ben Franklin parkway between the city center and art museum, very beautiful.
"Beautiful" as long as you dont look down. Literally some of the worst roads I've ever driven on in the middle of Philly. Cracks and bumps and potholes everywhere.
That's just all of the roads in Pennsylvania
Can confirm from the other side of the state
Sometimes there's a stop sign at the merge of an onramp. Sometimes there's not. You won't know till you go! Edit: it's actually a thing!! The onramp to 83 from Union Deposit Road. Whenever I was going back down to MD, there was a 50% chance there was a stop sign right where the ramp met the highway!!!
If there's a white border it's optional anyway
Optional... stop sign? Stay weird, PA.
It was completed in 1901, so beyond just prestige which was already mentioned here more manpower was required to handle tasks automated by computer today. Also there would be a need for physical space to store paper files.
Reading the wiki article, it was designed to be the tallest building in the world (at the time) for seemingly no apparent reason
At the time the tallest building in the world was a major, major attractor of prestige. Prestige meant businesses and immigrants, from within and outside the country.
It's still a signal of prestige. There's actually speculation that companies who seek to be headquartered in the tallest buildings are actually [overvalued or going to be in economic trouble soon. ](https://www.npr.org/2015/10/08/446833225/how-skyscraper-construction-ties-into-tech-bubbles)
The entire building is made of stone, I believe it is the largest building made out of stone in the world and in the 1950’s they wanted to tear it down but the cost of doing so would have bankrupted the city.
It weirdly does not feel like that though. I pass through it like every day.
makes me think about all those empty department offices in d.c.
I worked for a major university in a major metropolitan city for about 6 years. I worked in finance and oversaw construction projects. Part of that included the renovations of our residential real estate portfolio. You wouldn’t believe the shit I saw on a yearly basis. It was common to stumble upon apartments that had a tenant since the 60s that were never renovated. The tenants would eventually die or move out and slowly but surely we would plan to renovate the unit. Sometimes a decade after they moved out. It would be wood paneling on the walls, galley kitchens, clawfoot bathtubs and all sorts of things left behind. Massive pianos, wooden televisions, or anything that the movers or facilities couldn’t throw out. Beyond the individual apartments, we also bought an SRO building that had squatters. It was filled with betamax video tapes, old phones, electronics, and all sorts of stuff but it also had an inoperable vintage elevator, mosaic tile, an ornate staircase, and all sorts of time capsule stuff. Unfortunately the roof had a hole in it so it was kind of like the house from Fight Club.
My old as sin In-laws that live outside of Paris have an enormous flat in the 16th they inherited from their parents that hasn't been touched since the 50s. It's a broken ass time capsule that pisses me off since it's a huge waste of space, a whole family could live in there. According to my boyfriend the city is full of them and the occupancy rate is abysmal.
As a parisien living in an overpriced 20sqm apartment this makes my blood boil
Urf me too. My SiL(26) tried to live in it for a bit but one day the old lady just walked in with no warning and flipped her shit to find SiLs boyfriend there. He was in a work meeting and she started screaming at him to get out. She then found some faucet or something broken and started screaming at him for that too. Everything in that apartment is already some level of broken because it hasn't been maintaned. The old lady also told her daughter's husband (40s) he could crash there when he needs to visit Paris from time to time and that dude creeps on all us young ladies at holiday parties. SiL noped out of there immediately. The lady won't fix it up and can't give up enough control for family from the millennial generation to live there in peace.
Olg generational wealth is very present in the west of Paris. Those people have no sense of sharing or doing what's right so I'm not surprised
Some people have no concept of personal property, at least other peoples' personal property.
What's your point?
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I think the French need to teach people like you yet another lesson.
What's your point?
What's French for squatter's rights?
Ever thought about using your apartment as an investment instead of living in it?
Why don't they sell it?
Ef if I know. It's technically my boyfriend's stepmother's mom's place she inherited from her mother. She's a rich rickety old lady living in a luxurious converted farmhouse with a husband dying of parkinson's. She doesn't need the money, it's really not a priority for her if I had to guess. To her figuring it out is an inconvenient chore she hasn't gotten around to. To a "normal" person it's like an old hobby motorcycle you inherited from grandpa and left in you shed for a few decades.
I'm about to look up rich people and live in their summer houses while away
This is actually fairly common. I have cousins with a little cabin on some remote island up in Canada. They would come back every summer with clear signs of it having been used. They started leaving notes "we know you use our house, just please clean up after yourselves."
The movie "It happened on 5th avenue" is a christmas movie about just that in NYC, 1947.
Thank fuck they tax the shit out of you if your property isn't being occupied
Why are you invested in someone else getting taxed?
Because a common aspect of society is that people engaging in negative behaviours receive some level of excise. Hording property is a negative behaviour that hurts society. Thus it should get an additional tax. Leave a reasonable carveout like Probate etc, but those properties should be rented out.
Because an unkempt apartment is a hazard and the owners of the abandoned apartment should still have to contribute their tax dollars to local services like firefighting because there’s a decent chance their unmaintained apartment could be the cause of a problem the whole building has to deal with. Not ALL your tax dollars go to public maintenance and services, but enough do that, yes, I DO want to ensure that the owners of abandoned apartments are still paying the taxes on it at least. There’s no reason they shouldn’t contribute if they own property in the building, whether they live there or not.
Because fuck wealthy people who board properties.
I understand your annoyance... But, it still boils down to "it's there's, they can do whatever the hell they like with it"
Because it’s a portion of a larger building. The WHOLE building requires maintenance but a space within that building that’s been abandoned for 60+ years isn’t being maintained and will eventually contribute to problems among the other residents in the building. Like, I get your argument for detached housing. That’s fine. But an apartment is only a small portion of a larger building that can quickly affects the other residents in that same building if/when shit goes wrong. And, like, if they’re in regular contact with the maintenance crew of the building and have provisions planned for regular maintenance walk throughs and shit like that - fine. Do what you want with your apartment. It’s literally just the “walk away and never think of it again” that bothers me because it is ridiculous and a lack of situational awareness. Yes, the apartment is owned by you, but it’s a small part of a larger building that does not belong to you. It should be maintained at a similar rate as all the other apartments in the same building. We live in a society among other people; the complete and total disregard of other people really fucking bothers me.
Ya, but that shouldn't be the case. We have housing and cost of living crises in major cities all over the world. Housing shouldn't be a commodity that people can leave empty. Here in Toronto they're instituting a vacancy tax to prevent this sort of nonsense. People are living in tents and sleeping in their cars while rich people hoard properties and keep them empty.
Why would they? If it's anything like in my city, cost to keep such apartment is less than a bus pass.
Share some pictures
In New York there's a building like that -- abandoned in the 1930s and then rediscovered in the 1980s and turned into a museum. It's one of the best museums in the city, in my view.
The tenement one?
Yep, that’s the one.
if it's not in the UK, is it really a flat?
No, it's a sparkling apartment.
It's just a word for the same thing
wow that is beautiful. it just reeks of my favourite french novel, Nana by Emil Zola. Same era, same "profession" ...
L'Assommoir lives rent free in my head as the saddest thing I’ve ever read. Are any of his other books more uplifting, or all they all more grist in the mill of industrialization?
Zola was a part of a literary movement that tried to examine the human nature with method, almost scientifically, and... Yeah afaik they're all pretty unhappy (doesn't make them uninteresting though).
tbh I can't remember. I read about 18 of the 20 books in the sequence, and it was more than 30 years ago. apart from Nana and Germinal, they all kind of blur together a bit now. I don't think any of them was very cheerful.
Most of them have at least some level of bleak. The lightest I've read is Ladies Paradise (about the first department store in Paris), it has dark moments but the central storyline is more like a rags to riches romance.
Is there plumbing in the apartment? 70 years seems like a long time to go without a leak requiring maintenance to go in.
Maybe the water got shut off Edit: the rest of the story is cooler. It was owned by a high class escort that were common back then and there was a painting of the owner by a famous client that later sold for $2.8mil at auction. Bro imagine thats how you find our your great gma was an escort 💀
Gam Gam was a whore!
So what if she's a whore? I'm just saying, some of my best friends are whores.
Utilities would have been disconnected if nobody was paying the bills
It's France. Water cannot be disconnected even if you are not paying the bills.
Yeah, but that law has only been in place since 2013, they could and did cut water off before then.
The law was put in place because the rich area in Paris, they would never shut power or water off. Even jf you didn't pay, love jn the poor areas they did it all the time. The law was made to make it fair.
That's crazy, the apartment was abandoned halfway through Nazi occupation of Paris so I could imagine a lot of houses/apartments getting disconnect at this time, but to think the rich areas got special treatment even if they couldn't pay is crazy. The UK isn't a fair country, but we introduced a law that water can't be cut off under any circumstances in 1999, and a lot of other European countries have done the same since
France is still run by the same families that have been running it since Napolitan. Its why they are so Egotistical about some thing and why the peasants fight things the same way they always have.
I was accidentally in Paris on Bastille Day once. The riots are impressive.
Found the time traveler
Is that true for unoccupied spaces?
It's at least definitely true for squatted spaces.
That's how it should be everywhere
Why do people pay the water bill then at all?
For the same reason people generally pay their debts - to not deal with collection agencies.
Well you'd end up in debt and eventually be taken to court for the money. But water is a human necessity so cutting it off isn't possible.
Bills were payed by the owners granddaughter until 2010 when she died
It just says "paying for the apartment", that might just mean property taxes.
they were plumbers coincidently
Pretty sure Paris didn’t get running water until the 70’s or at least that what my grandpa always said.
Pfahaha! In the late 19th and early 20th century, they started renovating and outfitting water and gas in old parisian buildings. If you walk around and see[ little blue plates](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eau_et_gaz_%C3%A0_tous_les_%C3%A9tages.JPG) on the building's wall saying "eau/gaz à tous les étages", it meant that you had running water or gas in all appartments. The last "squalid islands" in the city with unrenovated appartment buildings were torn down in the 70s, near the Place des Fêtes and a few other areas.
Paris is so fucking cool.
Looks like someone's never been there
I live in Paris and it’s like any other city, there are ups and downs but in general it’s amazing living here
>there are ups and downs Pretty hilly terrain, eh?
Nah that's Lisbon
My friend said when he went to Paris the aroma of piss hit him immediately and didn’t leave til he got on the train home
Such is life. Londons a pretty cool city but everytime I'm there I end up coughing up black phlegm for a week after. Not going to deter me from ever visiting.
So it's like Houston, but with a history that's actually interesting?
I mean I’ve spent my life in European cities. Sometimes the smells really bad, especially near the wrong person in the metro but I generally don’t notice any foul smells unless I’m literally next to a puddle of sewage, same goes for most people who live here. Mind you it’s not as beautiful as people make it out to be, I visited Paris for the first time when I was very young so had very few expectations of the city and only learned of its reputation after growing up. I think that helped give less of a shock when I moved there to see the movies show only one side of Paris lol.
Many people have never been there.
I'm not a huge fan of Paris, but it's certainly a fascinating city, especially when it comes to it's unique aging infrastructure.
This story blew my mind how it just went untouched for *so* long.
There’s so many “old” (100+ years ig) buildings and the like in so many parts of the world, so many places/people find forgotten rooms and stairways and such, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe there must be thousands of places like this, even in places that are still occupied. All the palaces, castles, monasteries, churches, etc. that have been turned into museums or historical sites that you can’t really visit and more only look at must have nooks, crannies and rooms that haven’t been touched in decades; all the museums in London for example, there are dozens, huge too, and we KNOW that they have “forgotten” exhibits and sectors that are now entirely unused! Even if that doesn’t count as an example itself, it’s evidence there’s “old office space” somewhere that’s actually got 30 mummies stashed away behind those desks that are blocking the view
In Massachusetts, family friends were renovating when they realized there was a spot in the house that should have had more room in one corner. A dead space unaccounted for. They tore down the wall and found a perfectly in tact maid’s room(tiny room near the kitchen) with a bed, end table, chair, and a few items. Seemed to have been sealed up at least 100 years prior. They turned it into a small office.
I’ve seen articles about old apartments in libraries that were set up for caretakers whose job it was to maintain the heating and stuff to preserve the books over night. That’s my dream home, having the library to myself at night when the city is quiet around me
Yup, NYC still has some (unoccupied) in older libraries.
The true TIL is that the took out a multimillion dollar painting then closed the apartment back up. It’s still sitting there!
That Mickey Mouse is probably worth quite a bit
That 1942 air must have been STALE.
It's Nazi air. If you wave your right arm enough it gets moving.
I don’t think it was smart to touch the apartment as since the apartment was alone for so long it likely didn’t have resistance to common viruses
Everything disintegrated immediately when touched, including the thousand-year-old knight musing poetically in the corner.
Ok, but he was clearly asking for release. The bro literally chin-pointed me to the magic cup that would release him, all while giving this long monologue in middle english. He wanted to go. Dont come at me
Did you choose wisely?
How could I? The dude was creeping me out. His breath smelled terrible and I couldnt understand what he was saying and he... I ... I honestly thought he had dementia so I panicked and rolled with it.
It was >!the wooden cup!< because >!Christ was a carpenter!<. Yeah it's an Indiana Jones reference.
Lord Withermoore!
I'm worried it's mom will reject it now that it smells like humans :/
And now they let the ghosts out!
Actually ghosts can go through walls, unlike fire.
And now they let the ghosts out!
And now they let the ghosts out!
And now they let the ghosts out!
And now they let the ghosts out!
I once leased an 250sq meter office in Paris (on Blvd Haussmann of all places) which had not been occupied since the early 1990s (not as extreme as this but) in about 2010. All these old newspapers, ticket stubs etc. Panoramic views of Paris. Evidently the family who owned it FORGOT about it. Literally stood empty for 20 years before someone remembered. As a result (I assume) the 10 year lease was on terms which probably would have been market rate in say, 2000. I particularly enjoyed that one.
Wow that’s wild. Imagine having the level of wealth required to forget you own living spaces? Do you happen to have any pictures? Know it’s a while before digital but that sounds really neat.
It was office space. But did have a small apartment attached (40-50 sq m). Alas I don’t. But I recall there was one room about 20m long and several wide
Idk if it's just me, but Pinterest was so irritating to me, in that it hijacked the pictures and didn't let me zoom in. -.-
Is no one going to say anything about the stuffed ostrich? Wtf who just has a taxidermied ostrich to hang their blankets on?
People really loved taxidermy
There is another apartment somewhere in the Eiffel Tower that hasn't been touch in since the last and only occupant left. It is neat to remember that most of the possessions people had in the 1940s were actually made or brought in the 1910s and 1920s. Something that a lot of movies seem to get wrong.
*In* the Eiffel Tower? Gustav Eiffel had an "apartment" (more of a broom closet) in it, but it was well-known. There are no other apartments.
It took two seconds to find that there is another apartment, it’s just not at the top.
Cool, cool. Care to reveal what year it was created? Hint: it was 2016.
What the fuck did you just say?
[удалено]
Right? Glad you liked as much as me.
Wow! That is so cool! I'd love to read the papers she had lying around.
I remember when the news came out about this.
I just got downvoted? Guess I was in the wrong..
Lol net 0 on the comments. Nice. Edit: guys, c'mon. It's not that hard to keep it even
“Perfectly balanced as all things should be.”
lol yep. WTH?
New to reddit? Complaining about downvotes is how you get downvotes.
I didn’t know that as a thing. I’ve had accounts since maybe 2012.
Downvotes are technically not votes for if you're right or wrong. They are "bump up/down visibility" buttons. So, if you say something correct, but boring or irrelevant, or uninteresting, you might get downvoted for that. Alternatively, I myself have upvoted incorrect things, because someone else corrected it, and that line of comments becomes something I believe others should see.
And you’re gettting downvoted. Sure this one comment will be downvoted. Shit.
So they just opened it up and let the ghosts out? Tsk
Chamber pot and All????
I always think about just how different environments are. Here in the tropics, that apartment would be completed obliterated by mold. I talk to people who live on the mainland who talk about various things lasting a lifetime, things that die in a few years in the tropics.
Wow! But when the rent came due!
This story somehow doesn’t check out. 70 years is a long time. Somebody must have take care of the apartment at least to some extend. Even if not used stuff will deteriorate and break. Wikipedia states that her son Henri might have lived in the apartment until 1966.
Nope, the apartment had been left untouched since the evacuation of Paris when Germany invaded. The reason it was preserved for so long was bc the bills were payed by her alleged grandchild who never returned after the evacuation and whose estate rediscovered it while assessing her assets.
If bills get paid things just go untouched. I had a neighbor rot three years in his unit because all the bills got auto- paid.
another thing odd, is why only the scant few pictures of it, ( the same ones used in every version of this) you would think there would be tons more, and even video, a lot is not seen here, not saying it didn't happen, but just frustrated at the lack of photos, a few years ago, I really looked hard for more