![]() The front door, seen here, is known as the entrance portal. “I can’t tell you how much joy it’s given me.” “I didn’t like that apartment, so I thought I’d buy a nuclear missile silo instead,” he says. He’s spent more than 15 years restoring the silo, financed by his work as an architect and the sale of a one-bedroom apartment in Sydney. How many people do you know that can say they own a nuclear missile silo?” “They’re designed with nothing but functionality in mind, and that creates the most interesting architecture. “I find things like these silos and military bunkers extraordinary in their focus on purpose,” he says. Rather, as a designer, he’s interested in such a utilitarian structure designed specifically for function. Michael says he’s not a Cold War enthusiast or military fanatic. Video: Head underground to see how Michael lives part-time in this former missile silo He’s got a full kitchen, sleeping quarters and even the original launch control console to tinker with. He snatched one up near the Plattsburgh base in 1996 for $160,000 USD and has spent the years ever since plunking down more than $300,000 and restoring his silo to its original glory, while making it a part-time home along the way. So they remained abandoned for more than 50 years.Įventually, people like Australian architect Alexander Michael came along. They donated the silos to different counties, who didn’t know what to do with them either. ![]() The military didn’t know what to do with the silos, which were vast, cavernous underground structures that went 185 feet down and housed Air Force squadrons. ![]() The crisis lasted less than two weeks, and because the silos didn’t work very well anyway and had a lifespan of around three years, most were decommissioned by 1964. In the early 1960s, faced with the imagined scenario of total nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a dozen intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos were constructed in the Adirondacks in upstate New York near the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base.
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