Lou’s View – July 28, 2016
All Hidden Spaces
By Lou Bernard
I just read an article about all the interesting hidden places in New York City. Underground tunnels, secret rooms, and all sorts of cool stuff. All of which you can see if you’re willing to travel to New York. Except, if you’re like me, you despise New York Pardon my French, but New York makes me gag up a lung.
Fortunately, you don’t have to go as far as New York to see cool concealed places. If you live in Lock Haven, you’re lucky—You have a selection of them around your city, and a cool, clever writer to tell you about them.
There are “secret stairways” in the Lock Haven Post Office. The post office opened in 1919, and one of the local newspapers ran a story on the new building at the time. The article said,”A novel feature are five what, for want of a better term, may be called secret staircases. These are narrow fluelike passages, running through the building, containing steel ladders.”
Supposedly, only the people in charge would have keys to them. The newspaper stated,”This knowledge of invisible surveillance, it is said, removes temptation from persons who might otherwise be tempted while handling money.” Post office staff say there are still locked doors in the building, and small windows that may be used to view the employees.
The Episcopal Church has a large sub-basement. Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church has stood on Main Street since 1856, having burned down and been rebuilt during the 1936 flood. One thing that has been consistent is the large, open basement underneath. A big dark room with a dirt floor, it was where some of the old bits of the church ended up after the rebuilding—The contractors put them in the basement and buried them.
Fox’s Market House Restaurant has secret tunnels underneath it. The next time you’re having a meal at Fox’s, stop and think about the fact that you’re sitting just above a dark, awesome tunnel.
The building was built in 1871, and originally used as a community market house, later becoming a bottling company. One long tunnel, with a series of rooms on each side, was built underneath for storing feed and grain. They’re still there, but it’s much easier to look at the photograph of them that current owner Matt Clark has on the wall. It’s fascinating, and well worth the trip.
The courthouse clock tower is full of history. You know that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, with that room with all the boxes? The top of the courthouse kind of reminds me of that. Up the stairs, in the clock tower, is a storage area. Don’t try to go up without permission, trust me. Old files and documents line the shelves up there. It’s really cool….And yet, not the end.
You can keep going up, climbing stairs and then a ladder, until you’re in the clock tower itself. The clock mechanism is right there, and the walls are lined with signatures, some dating back to the 1800s. (And, yes….I’ve placed mine among them.)
The Piper Museum has a radio-free “Screen Room.” One of the neat features of the Piper Aviation Museum is that the building was actually used to design airplanes when Piper was still in Lock Haven. According to President John Bryerton, one of the rooms on the second floor was the Screen Room, which was used to block out radio waves.
The room would be used to test manufactured radios, which could only be done with no interference. So the room was designed to have the walls lined with metal wiring, to block out any incoming radio waves. Today, the room is used as a small theater to show an introductory video, so if you go to watch it, know that you can’t listen to me while I’m on WBPZ in the morning.
The Ross Library has a largely unknown museum inside it. John Sloan was a very famous American artist, and he was born in Lock Haven in 1871. Very few people are aware that the Ross Library has a small museum dedicated to him, available by appointment.
After his death in 1951, his widow donated many of his items to the library in an effort to keep his memory alive. These are all displayed in a room on the second floor, in the oldest part of the building. John Sloan’s paints and brushes, his chair, his pipe, some family artifacts, some of his clothing….All of this is on display in one of the library’s secret spaces.
The room is kept locked, but people are welcome to call for an appointment to come and see it. As for all these other secret spaces….Well, good luck arranging an appointment to view hidden tunnels and basements. But it’s really cool to know this stuff’s out there, isn’t it?
