Category File
New York City
5 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The Woolworth Building as a Cathedral of CommerceThe Woolworth Building as a Cathedral of Commerce theory held that the skyscraper’s neo-Gothic form was not merely a decorative borrowing from ecclesiastical architecture, but a deliberate spiritual substitution in which commerce was given the visual language of religion. Because the building was openly described as a “Cathedral of Commerce,” critics and later theorists argued that it signaled the transfer of reverence from church to market. In the strongest version, the structure was intended to acclimate the public to Money Worship by housing business within a vertical sacred form. The theory drew power from the building’s real neo-Gothic architecture, the documented nickname, and the broader transformation of Manhattan into a skyline of corporate monuments.
- The Secret Speakeasy SubwaysThe Secret Speakeasy Subways theory was the rumor that beneath New York City there existed a parallel underground rail system, or at least a hidden network of special-use tracks and tunnels, reserved for bootleg transport, VIP movement, and clandestine visits by powerful gangsters and politicians during Prohibition. In its most dramatic form, the story claimed that Al Capone and senior political figures could travel underground between protected locations without using the public subway. The theory drew power from the city’s real subterranean complexity: abandoned lines, service tunnels, freight tracks, old pneumatic-transit remnants, and concealed rail connections such as the later-famous Waldorf-Astoria platform. These real underground spaces gave the rumor enough physical plausibility to endure as a New York Prohibition legend.
- The "Subway" Air PoisoningThis theory claimed that the new New York City subways did not merely carry passengers underground, but poisoned the city’s atmosphere by drawing oxygen below street level and leaving the surface depleted. In other versions, the problem worked in reverse: the subways trapped foul air below and then returned it altered, exhausted, or disease-bearing. The theory belonged to the earliest years of underground rail travel, when ventilation, crowding, dust, heat, and fear of enclosed air were central public concerns.
- The "Woolworth" Building SignalThis theory held that the Woolworth Building was not simply a commercial skyscraper but a concealed signal tower, sometimes described as a radio mast for the Illuminati or for hidden financial elites. It emerged because the building was one of the most visually dominant structures in New York after its 1913 opening, was dressed in highly symbolic neo-Gothic ornament, and quickly acquired a public aura larger than ordinary office architecture. In rumor form, its height, lighting, self-contained machinery, and “Cathedral of Commerce” image were transformed into evidence of hidden transmission rather than ordinary commercial modernity.
- The "Buried" City of New YorkThis theory claims that modern New York sits atop a buried earlier version of the city, with streets, buildings, and whole urban layers hidden beneath the present surface. In current conspiracy culture it is often linked to the Mud Flood or Tartaria narrative, but it also draws plausibility from real features of New York history: landfilling, changing street grades, buried wells and foundations, erased shorelines, and deep archaeological deposits in Manhattan and the outer boroughs. The theory expands those real layers into a total lost-city narrative.