Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Foreclosure

Transcript

Foreclosure · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: When it opened, it was enormous. The Higatt Regency Hotel
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: opened in downtown Kansas City in July of nineteen eighty.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: It's forty five stories tall and has seven hundred and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: fifty rooms. One year in the history of the hotel,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on July seventeenth of nineteen eighty one, fifteen hundred patrons
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: attended a monthly dance party at the hotel. They filled
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the large lobby, including these suspended walkways that stretched across
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: the atrium from the second, third, and fourth floors. Suddenly,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: everyone on the walkways heard a loud snap from above,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and then they were falling. Time slowed, and all sound
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: seemed to disappear as the fourth floor walkway, with hundreds
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: of people on it, came loose from its steel suspension
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: rods and crashed onto the second floor walkway below it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: That walkway immediately fell as well, with both of them
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: plumbing to the lobby below. Dozens of people were instantly
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: killed by the collapse of the walkways. Most were completely crushed,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: but some were cut in half or had limbs severed.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Loose electric wires swung across the lobby, and a broken
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: water line from the fourth floor sprayed water down onto
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the catastrophe below. For those people trapped beneath the rubble,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: there was now a risk of drowning as water began
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to pool beneath them. Someone called nine to one one
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and soon emergency workers arrived outside, but they didn't have
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: easy access to the lobby. The whole front of the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: building was blocked by the collapse. They had to call
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in heavy construction equipment and begin cutting away the debris.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It was like a horror movie, as behind each removed
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: piece of debris was the shocking sight of dozens of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: horribly mangled bodies. Once emergency workers could get inside, they
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: had to quickly usher out everyone who could walk, and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: then they started triage. In the end, one hundred and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: fourteen people died. The walkways had collapsed due to a
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: fatal engineering flaw. As I mentioned, these were suspension walkways,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: meaning that they were hanging from the ceiling by steel rods.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: A last minute changed, though, had made this design extremely unsafe. Originally,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: each walkway was supposed to carry its own weight on
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a set of their own metal fasteners to those steel rods,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: but the builders thought that it would be too difficult
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to build metal rods that would be long enough to
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: reach all of them, so instead of each walkway supporting
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: its own weight, only the top one ended up being
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: supported by the rods connected to the ceiling. The bottom one, though, well,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: that was supported by the walkway above it, which put
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: a lot more weight on those fasteners than intended. All
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it took was one hundred patrons to send it crashing down,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and just as terrifying, the standards were so lax at
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the engineering firm. That's as different people moved on and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: off the project, there was no clear paperwork trail of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: design changes or review of those changes. The engineers, the builders,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the owners, and the city inspectors all had an opportunity
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to catch this flaw, but none of them did. The
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: engineering firm was found most liable. They lost their license
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and were sued for one hundred million dollars by various parties.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: The disaster also led to improve safety standards across the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: country and is now standard freshman course material for any
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: engineering student. It shows how engineers are just as responsible
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: for public safety as any firefighter, police officer, or doctor.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So if you're a curious listener, engineering might just be
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the profession for you. It's a job that requires constant curiosity,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: always checking and rechecking, running the math, running it again,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: being vigilant for any mistakes. Engineers may not be on
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the front lines or thrust into emergency situations, but they
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: make decisions every day that are still a matter of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: life and death. Washington, d C. Is often referred to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: as the Halls of Power. That's an easy enough metaphor
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to understand too. The decisions that governed the United States
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: all get made within the hallways of Washington and its
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: surrounding buildings. Like many capitals across the world, it's expected
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that this is where power lives in America, which is
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: why it's so puzzling with official government buildings are absolutely
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: falling apart from neglect. Well, I'd like to tell you
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: about one building in particular that was once referenced as
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the ugliest building in the world in spite of it
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: holding immense importance to the US federal government. That would
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: be the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, six
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and a half blocks away from the White House. It's
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: an imposing concrete structure with enormous square columns and walls
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: of bland inset windows. Designed by the Chicago based architecture
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: firm Murphy and Associates. It's the platonic ideal of brutalism,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and it served as the FBI headquarters for the last
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: fifty years, and for at least half of that time
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the FBI has been trying desperately to get out of it.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been a pillar of
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: American law enforcement ever since its founding in nineteen oh eight.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: There's a self made mythos to its existence that they're
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the elite, stalwart defenders of the American Constitution from terrors
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and foreign influence, and of course that mythos is hard
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to square with the really decrepit office building. It was
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: originally designed with a pedestrian observation deck that people could
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: use to survey the surrounding buildings. Of course, when the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: building first opened in nineteen seventy five. The observation deck
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: was immediately closed for security concerns and has remained closed
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: for the last half century. For much of the nineteen seventies,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the building was a public iore. J Edgar Hoover himself,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the FBI director who gave the building its name, was
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: privately disgusted with the design, referring to the building as
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a monstrosity. He would die three years before it opened. Now,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: as hideous as it is to much of the general public,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the design of the Hoover Building has a very specific
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: aim to project strength and intimidation. Its namesake was a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: famous and controversial figure for bringing a tough guy attitude
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: to the Justice Department, cracking down on civil rights figures
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: as much as those suspected of terrorism. The unadorned concrete
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: facade of the building is a relic of the days
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: when the FBI wanted to be seen as America's secret police,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: a poignant irony since it was under construction during the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Nixon years and opened a year after the president resigned
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: in disgrace because of the Watergate scandal. Starting in the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: early two thousands, the J. Edgar Hoover Building was more
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: than an iceore, it was also a safety hazard. Regular
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: inspections of the building determined that the plumbing was out
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of date, the fire alarms and smoke detectors were in
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: dire need of replacement, and the elevators and air conditioning
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: units were reaching the end of their life cycle. What's more,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the concrete that made up the walls themselves was starting
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: to crumble. It got so bad that they had to
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: install a layer of netting outside the building to protect
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: pedestrians from falling chunks of concrete. For over the last
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: decade now, the US government has been fielding petitions to
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: either renovate the building or relocate the FBI headquarters altogether.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: The Great Recession of the late two thousands forced the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: FBI to put any plans on hold, as the cost
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: of renovating the building could climb as high as a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: billion dollars at that point, not money that the government
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: had to spare. Throughout the early twenty tens, the US
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: government fielded proposals from private sector companies on developing a
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: new headquarters for the FBI. None of these proposals wound
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: up moving forward. A time of this recording, there has
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: been no effective progress on moving the FBI from the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: decaying concrete shell of a building. The amount of red
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: tape and money required to make that move probably makes
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it unlikely to happen anytime soon. So if you're ever
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: worried that you're being spied on by government spooks at work,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: consider that maybe they're just their window shopping looking for
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a new office. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: dot com. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.