A Safe Place During A Zombie Apocalypse

I know a couple of wild & crazy kids: Brian and Bailey.

The couple is impossibly young, and attending Emporia State University.

So, why are they wild & crazy?

Because they want to buy an old house. Even an old house needing work. Even an old house needing a ton of work.

God love ’em.

Young people such as this give me hope for the future of our architectural and historic heritage.

Recently, the two rented the second floor in an old house. The house, and its near-twin next door, have always been favorites of mine, and might have been designed by architect Charles. W. Squires, who did the Cross House.

 

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Brian and Bailey have the second floor in the left twin.

 

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Cool front door.

 

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Brian mentioned that they had a secret room. A secret room????? My ears perked right up. They asked if I could come over with a ladder, because they noticed that a  window on the second floor, just above the porch, did not actually exist INSIDE their apartment. A mystery window!!!!!

 

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Brian and I climbed, breathlessly, up the ladder, and with great anticipation peered into the mystery window. And did not find much. Some sleuthing revealed that the house had been built with an unfinished attic. When the house was converted into apartments in the 1950s, the attic was finished off as an apartment, and the former attic window now looks into a dead space above the 1950s staircase. There is a closet to each side, and I mentioned that they could punch through the back of one closet and gain access to the space, which has standing headroom in the middle, is the width of the house, and about 4-feet in width. Bailey considered this for a moment, and said: “Oh, it would be an ideal space to hide in case of a zombie apocalypse.”

 

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I assumed Bailey was kidding. But…in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I know where I am headed.

 

1 Comment

  1. Mike on April 15, 2017 at 10:07 am

    My great-grandmother’s house had a hidden space, and even tho she lived there from 1918 until 1989, no one in our family knew it existed. After she passed away, the couple who bought the house gutted it, they hated all of the dark shiny wood trim, high ceilings and tall windows, plus they wanted an open floor plan 🙁 Between two of the bedrooms, there was a space about 2′ by 14′ that had been walled in, apparently when the house was built. It had tongue and groove walls, and had never been papered or painted. The only items in the space were an empty wooden nail keg with the original owner’s name written on it, a hammer, and a newspaper from the late 1880s, still folded where the reader had layed it on the keg. The house was so big, with so many odd angles, that in 70 years, no one in our family had ever wondered why the north bedroom was 2′ shorter than the front bedroom…

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