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33 Thomas Street in New York, New York

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View of 33 Thomas Street from the adjacent streets at the intersection of Church & Worth.

So you finally noticed that terrifying, windowless skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan? It's fine, really. Now, move along.

Officially known as the "Long Lines Building," New York's doom-iest tower was designed in 1974 by architect John Carl Warneke. Though its most noteworthy feature is its utter lack of windows, the building is also noteworthy for its unusually high ceilings and for being designed to bear an extremely large amount of weight per square-foot. 

Not that the latter two details are something the layperson would ever be privy to witnessing on their own, of course. The name "Long Lines" suggests a lovely hat tip to the building's architectural elements, but in reality the sky fortress was originally created to house AT&T's carrier exchanges for their long distance telephone switches and equipment. Today it continues in that purpose, while also storing a portion of the company's datacenter processing. This ephemeral element of the technological infrastructure has been deemed so important that the building is thought to be able to survive nuclear fallout, and exist off-grid for up to two weeks without issue.

One look at the skyscraper's face should tell you that public admittance isn't an option. But that beautiful, terrifying image you have in your head of stories upon stories telephone cables and digital boxes stacked 18-feet high, glowing within 33 Thomas' impenetrable walls might just be better than the real thing, anyway.


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