Underground as Unintentional Archive

Found here.

Philosophy has a physical effect in New York. Everyone is trying to make his or her mark on the town, and that's evidenced literally throughout the city - in the form of everything from high-end advertisements that cover entire building facades to tiny, consistent mustache graffiti. Even our litter and noise pollution is in its way a record of our existence. Something perhaps about the unlikeliness of being noticed amps up our urge to issue notice.

In this sense, it is unsurprising to point out that these collections of marks-on-the-world tend to congregate and compile in the city's underground. Some of this is due to drift, or the amount of daily time we spend  under the street here and in other metropolitan areas around the world, but I believe some of it is a hold over from supposedly long-lost instincts. From the caves at Lascaux to Plato's allegory of the cave, enclosed spaces have held a fascination for our creative impulses since our first recorded expressions. In many ways it just makes practical sense - underground is generally considered a safe repository, as far as global environments go.

What can be surprising is when the underground serves as an archive or record without conscious effort. In many ways, we can uncover a strange archival topography underground, just by remaining observant. One of my favorite pastimes while waiting for the train is spotting remnants of the The French Connection New York amidst all the now-a-days You've Got Mail glitz. (Or for that matter, spotting the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 underneath all the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.) Whether you're a New York diorama artist creating a personal quasi-geological record of Canal Street, or simply a vandal exposing last week's new release under this week's newly-plastered poster, the layers of the underground are too many and varied to count.

Sometimes, whole rooms preserve whole eras. This can give us a glimpse of turn-of-the-century architecture, or even help us pinpoint the frozen year when a section was converted into unintentional archive. The possibilities are pretty endless, and who can say? In a few hundred years, our means of commute might prove our most extant public record for anthropologists. So I say: Keep making your mark.

Speaking of Morlocks: The Malta Catacombs

From Drow elves to the devil himself, we rarely imagine good-natured, caring folks when we imagine secret underground races. Generally speaking, if it comes from the ground, we loathe and despise it. Perhaps we're compensating for some internal self-awareness of our more soil-bound genetic ancestors? Whatever the cause, it makes for some dang fine horror. The tales from the Maltese Catacombs may have more to do with superstition and poor history preservation than secret races, but they still get my imagination piqued.

via Listverse

The Malta Catacombs

"In 1902, in the town of Paola on the island of Malta, workers making way for a new housing development stumbled across a vast subterranean complex that dated back to Malta’s prehistoric period, some 3000 years ago. The sight has since became a UNESCO world Heritage site, and was officially named the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum. A more extensive archaeological survey of the site was undertaken, and it became clear that all was not as simple as it seemed. Over 30,000 human skeletons were found in burial chambers dotted across the site, including men, women and children. Many skulls had unusually widened craniums and baffled scientists in terms of ethnic origin. Stories began spreading that it was tangible evidence of a subterranean human species.

"The islands earliest inhabitants engaged in human sacrifice to appease their god of the underworld, who they believed dwelled beneath the island itself. The name they gave to him roughly translates as ‘Serpent’. When Saint Paul was shipwrecked on the island as recorded in the bible, he documented this, and even claimed to have been bitten by the serpent himself. He also spent a great deal of time there converting the people from their primitive worship of a reptilian deity to Catholicism. It is believed, by some scholars, that the human sacrifices were involuntarily cast down into the catacombs, to be devoured by the serpent and prevent the islanders from incurring his wrath.

"Rumors of a cover-up, by the Maltese government and other authorities, are rife with stories including the scrubbing of texts and ancient drawings from the catacomb walls, and the mysterious and sudden death of the sites first head archaeologist. The underground complex still hasn’t been fully explored. A British embassy worker in the 1940’s, gave an account of foraying into the sites lowest room on the last level, after convincing the tour guide to allow her access to an area usually off limits to the public. Upon entering a small portal in the wall she claimed to have seen 20 reptilian beings covered in white hair on a ledge across from her. One raised his palm and subsequently her candle extinguished. She made a quick exit but upon returning some days later she was told that the guide who had shown her the portal had never been employed at the site and no such portal existed."

Step Well

When we think of being subterranean, we immediately think of being "under" ground, but this is not always the case.For some reason, photos of stepwells (bawdi, or baoli, or vav, in Indian dialects) have been tumbling out of 'blogs lately. Perhaps it has to do with the increasing interest in ecologically sustainable lifestyles. Stepwells are in most cases ancient Indian structures built in part to make use of a three-month monsoon season in the course of an entire year, but they have also come to serve cultural and religious purposes. To this end, the stepwells can be beautifully and ornately decorated. The structure of the steps themselves is a simple, pleasing pattern, but look to this post on DesignFlute for examples of how ornate and unique a stepwell can be.In essence, stepwells serve two very basic functions: to collect rain water, and to make it accessible. This account for the enormous basin shape, and the steps. From there, the designs can vary wildly, in part because these structures don't present any of the dangers of reservoirs or other continually renewing or flow-based water management structures. When the water only comes once a year, you might imagine a great deal of ritual can be built up around it, and the common necessity for these structures from place to place also inspires people to take creative responsibility, and identify with the particular details of their design and structure.
Stepwells present all sorts of fascinating combinations of pragmatic use and cultural significance, including a certain synergy of design and natural process. The silt that gathers in these structures comes to act as a natural water filter, for example, which is a quality that can be appreciated by animals as well as humans. One can imagine, too, the way in which a stepwell being the primary source for water during most of the year can develop into elaborate rituals and an appreciation for simple quantity. Just imagine the excitement and bounty of an enormous, full basin of clean water, and very gradually watching as it sinks lower, and lower, revealing more and more layers of steps to traverse, as the year progresses.Not all stepwells are wide-open to the sky, either. Many have structures built across their upper levels that allow rain through, but also provide shade and useful rooms and sub-levels for various uses in the drier season.
And then again, there's the steps.

Oh, those steps...
I have to imagine that every community has one or two epic legends about folks taking a tumble down the local stepwell just before the monsoon season, when it would take a particularly long (and jarring) time to reach the inevitable conclusion. I can't help but wonder, too, if some folks get especially adroit with maneuvering on those myriad pyramid-like step structures. Errol Flynn truly missed a great environment for showcasing his legwork, that's all I'm saying further on the matter.
Stepwells are water temples. They represent a magnificent, ancient solution to an absolute necessity.

Profound thanks to InfraNet Lab for a far more informative, yet somehow succinct, explanation of the function of these structures than any other source I was able to find.

Underground L.A.?

Yes. (via BoingBoing)

Urban Stalactites

Spotted on the uptown-bound platform of the 4/5/6 last weekend. At first glance I took them for the usual peeling paint that can appear on the ceilings of the older subway tunnels (and given what paint used to be made of, isn't that an appealing thought?) but I soon recognized these miniature stalactites for what they are.

Natural stalactites are the result of dripping limestone elements that recombine in almost palindromic chemical reactions as they make contact with water and air, respectively. Stalactites can also form, however, on concrete, through a more rapid reaction fueled by the calcium oxide found in concrete. It's interesting how natural processes can inform a man-made structure -- we tend to focus on the reverse, but nature always has the last word.

Chi-Town Underground:

Points, too, for "Pynchonian twist":

Subterranean deluge in Chicago. [via Granta]

Central Grandeur

As I research for more exotic adventures (though never knowingly illegal ones, I have to promise -- otherwise, how could I publish them?) my day-to-day travels through New York bring me in contact with more and more underground features that we tend to take for granted. Grand Central Terminal (not "Station," much to my surprise) is an awfully interesting subset of the underground New York. It could almost qualify as an "underground city," were it not for the fact that its underground portions are predominantly for transportation purposes. The main room itself is below street level on the west side, and then the rest of the complex just keeps going on down. With the addition of the MTA's East Side Access project's tracks 140 feet below the surface of Park Avenue, the whole thing will have dimensions reminiscent of an iceberg.

There have been three different buildings, each of increasing size and complexity, on the same site where Grand Central Terminal now stands. As you can see from the cross-section above, even the plans from the early 20th century structure (the extant third iteration itself) demonstrate an impressive hive of subterranean rooms and passages. Though for a short while in the 60s there were plans to build the Terminal upward, all major additions have continued to burrow further down through New York's famous bedrock. The image below of one of the first excavations of the site alone is an exciting glimpse of dieselpunk possibilities, for those of you so inclined.
I was in the GCT last week to meet up with someone, and we spent much of our time in its truly subterranean "dining" concourse -- I must confess, rather by my own design. This concourse is approximately the same floor dimensions as the main one above it, but subdivided by support arches and other foundational structure into rough two areas: the inner hallway of seating, and the outer circumference of food shops and entrances to the tracks. What immediately struck me as I entered it last week was the problem of lighting; here was a space that would cling to its darkness at every opportunity. By and large, the designers overcame this by the sue of hundreds of regular ol' lightbulbs, at regular intervals.

There were plenty of other, more creative solutions to filling some of those pesky lower areas of murk, such as illuminated poles built into each food shop's structure -- a must-have for any underground market, I should think.

The main seating areas (divided in two by a central open, bar-like shop) are cleverly patterned after older-fashioned train cars, including luggage racks. Actually, the whole dining course has rather suffered from a "Disney-fication" along the lines of Times Square, though they have made sure to include some authentic touches to such cheery nostalgia. The inner seating areas also feature warm-feeling wooden cross beams that serve to make the place feel rather like a well-lit vault but also, more importantly, no doubt serve to cut down on the sheer acoustic assault echoing marble can create in such a bustling place.

There are wall sconces, too! Light, light, everywhere! Below is a shot from outside the seating vault, further accenting its vaultiness with arched, spear-tip-gated portals. I'm unsure as to why there is a grand portal, and that wee imitation beside it. Perhaps it's indicative of some aspect of the original support design for the upper concourse.
Gleam also takes care of some of the lighting, as the polished marble reflects a lot of that bulbed light. A glimpse down one of the many track entrances shows just how significant the color of those incandescent bulbs can be. As you can see, too, most of the tracks are in fact further underground from the dining concourse.

There are a good amount of secrets attached to the GTC, of course. One of the best known (and by extension, least covert) is a secret "platform 61" beneath the Waldorf-Astoria, nearly ten blocks north of the terminal building itself. A great write-up about this platform's history and purpose by Joseph Brennan can be found here. In addition, there are various abandoned and converted tracks, as well as some secreted rooms. Sub-basement M42, though it has been explored by a few television programs (including Cities of the Underworld) is in a location still kept secret. As it provides the traction current to the Terminal, its undermining would mean a whole lot of mess. During World War II, Hitler sent spies with the specific intent to find and disable this key component in troop transportation in the US.

As I headed for the 7 train to make my return to Queens, I was reminded of DC's expansive metro platform tunnels. Most of New York's platforms are very modest, function-over-form affairs, and quite small, but the 7 platform beneath the GCT dates from the same period and has a huge, arching ceiling. It is nothing to paint a portrait of, but I wonder at how it was lit before someone installed its current Brutalist fluorescent lighting scheme.

An incandescent set of headlights saves us all (even the dude in the red sport coat) from the lightsaber-like glare...

Vast, subterranean and semi-submerged spaces hold a certain unique appeal. Not all caves and caverns are cramped, or chaotic in their structure. Some are more like mansions, or cathedrals.

Another Tuff Town

Here are a few quick photos from Kandovan, a town in Northern Iran near Tabriz. Like Cappadoccia, it's carved into volcanic tuff rock, making excavation easy but lasting. (via IranProud forum)

Hidden in Plain Sight

Throughout New York's subway system there are nooks and crannies that go generally unnoticed by the crowds of commuters. The above is a nestled doorway directly off the track on the north end of the north-bound local R/W platform at 34th Street. On the other side of that same platform are a couple of old doors with new locks -- a sure sign of something old and important/dangerous. Part of the charm of the tunnels that make up the transportation system here is the fact that they are man-made, for largely utilitarian purposes, yet over such an extended period of time that some of its crenelations are actually lost. Others, like this door, are mysteries that simply get overlooked a-thousand-plus times a day.

Open your eyes. The underground is everywhere.

Silo, Sweet Silo

Nothing exciting to add here as to design, per se, but just had to post this: MissileBases.com.

Urban Subterranea

When I first moved to New York I lived in Park Slope, which has come to be a rather desirable and expensive neighborhood. At the time it was well on its way up, but I was living with my girlfriend in a windowless, 10'x6' room in a basement apartment. Yes, the rumors are true: In New York you can rent and live in a closet. Actually, this was probably more along the lines of a converted pantry, as it had inner closets and such, each rather narrow and the opening of which meant you had just robbed yourself of at least 20% of your maneuverable space. We were subleasing, of course, and it was one of those subleases that reach back so far along a chain of people that the "property" probably fell under some 18th century law that qualified it as a commune, or coven. In New York, "underground" has many implications.

The F train is the one that most readily runs to Park Slope, and it is famous for being the last of the horse-drawn subway trains. (I once heard a very coherent monologue -- from an otherwise very messed-up and deranged homeless man -- on the F platform at Broadway-Lafayette about the history of the F train, by way of explaining or perhaps excusing the train's lateness that evening. It was coherent, that is, apart from being SHOUTED AT THE VERY TOP OF HIS LUNGS.) One day not long after moving into my pantry, I rode in the front car of the F on my way home, late at night, from a rehearsal or some such thing. On the older train cars, the only window at the front of the train is a small square one, at average eye level, fit into the front sliding door. Very often, this window is blacked out, presumably either to prevent ogling at the outside world or to trick people into thinking there's more train to walk through and laugh merrily at them as they break the rules by sliding yet another between-car door open and plunge to their grisly death. I place even odds. At any rate, this window wasn't blackened, and I slouched into the door and observed our forward progress.

Before too long I realized that I was looking at really very old structures. It seemed almost anachronistic, as I listened to my headphones and saw steel girders giving way to a wooden crossbeam here and there, and the concrete walls growing knottier with age and disintegration. The train lights carried detail after detail into view, and I realized that we were in the section of the train that runs from Manhattan to Brooklyn, under the East River. Under the East River. There's a school of thought that says we take our lives in our hands every day, that even getting out of bed, much less crossing a busy street is risking a chance of death. When I realized just how old the tunnel through which I was hurtling was, I was thrilled. For the first time it occurred to me that there are centuries-old hidden tunnels and chambers and disused passages laced throughout New York's famous bedrock and, odds are, no one person knows everything of what's down there.

I'm very pleased to be joining the enterprise here at Subterranean Design. It's a little like discovering an enthusiasm I had forgotten I have. From time to time I'll be contributing information about Manhattan's underground network -- probably a bit of research, but hopefully quite a bit of personal exploration. The modern world has hidden depths, and it should be great fun to sink to their levels.

The Cave of the Seven Sleepers

The Cave of the Seven Sleepers is a man-made ritual complex in Turkey, near Ephesus, where seven dudes (and a dog, if you prefer the version in the Koran) were entombed alive during the persecutions of Decius. They went to sleep and woke up 200 years later, which is a pretty cool story.

Click on the image for a larger version. I imagine a setup like this: Forbidden catacombs, sealed off by a cruel emperor ages ago. Intrepid explorers expect the restless dead, but when they crack the seal, they wake up a bunch of confused guys speaking an archaic version of the local language and marveling at tempered steel and bullseye lanterns.

Case Study: Underground Cities of Cappadoccia

In the central steppes of modern Turkey lies an area of fascinating natural beauty and even more fascinating subterranean architecture. In Cappadoccia there are numerous dwellings, churches, and other buildings carved into the rock and built from bricks of the same.

More impressive are the underground cities, built by early Christians as places of refuge and dwelling. So far eight have been found, but there are probably more. The largest, at Derinkuyu, was accidentally discovered in 1965 when a man cleaning his house accidentally broke through a back wall and discovered a chamber, which led to more chambers, then more. at Derinkuyu there are at least eight separate levels extending down 85 meters below the surface, including chapels, a baptismal font, grain storage areas, and dwelling areas.

Geology: Obviously, the type of rock available in Cappadoccia is an important factor in enabling all of this construction. It's a particular type of tuff, which means it's compressed volcanic ash. The less-compressed areas have then been eroded, leaving solid masses of tuff that can be easily carved and excavated. It is easily cut into bricks for use aboveground or in dividing walls. Anyone looking to build a similar site should look for semi-arid areas of previous volcanic activity that will have built large columns of appropriate tuff. Even workers with relatively little previous stoneworking experience should be able to construct and expand subterranean dwellings in this material.

Ecology:
Although the soil itself is rather sandy, it is volcanic and nutrient-rich. In order to make it fertile, residents here carve decorative pigeon-holes into the rock faces for doves to nest in and harvest the guano, mixing it with the soil. Aboveground crops of grapes, apricots, and wheat can be dried and stored for long periods underground. If larger underground chambers were present, pigeonholes in subterranean caverns could be inhabited by bats and the resulting fertilizer used in mushroom production.
"Pigeon Holes", Uploaded by Verity Cridland on 11 Oct 08

Defensibility: One advantage of interspersing numerous hand-carved cave dwellings honeycombed into a mountainside with entrances to a larger underground lair is that enemies won't know where the real entrances are. This would be much harder to accomplish in a harder stone such as granite. Furthermore, the ease of carving means that it's easy to construct elaborate labyrinths beneath the earth that make it difficult for trespassers to find their way in.
IMG_0326", Uploaded by lesleyk on 23 Aug 05