For my wife, the appeal was almost more folkloristic: people are always dreaming about discovering a hidden corridor behind a sliding bookcase, she pointed out, or stumbling onto a previously unknown second bedroom lying in wait behind old clothes in the back of the closet. People are fascinated by secret passages, she said; burglary, in a sense, just makes that fantasy real. Burglary’s strange conceptual promise is precisely that the world is riddled with shortcuts and secret passages—we just have to find them. It’s a crime, but it also symbolizes that there are ways of navigating the world that we ourselves have yet to discover.
As we stood there at Leslie’s grave, New York City’s subways, streets, and skyscrapers just over the horizon of a small hill, it became clear that the very idea of the burglar—this mysterious, trespassing figure able to misuse buildings and bend whole cities to his or her will—is the unavoidable flip side of any architectural creation. Burglary, in its very essence, is a crime that cuts down through the outer layers of the world to reveal the invisible grain of things, how cities really work and buildings are meant to function, from quiet side streets to emergency fire stairs and elevator shafts. Burglars are the stowaways of the metropolis, hidden deliberately in the shadows, haunting us like poltergeists, malevolent spirits conjured into existence by the magic of four walls, even if only to reveal those walls’ inherent fragility. For every building designed, a theoretical burglar is somewhere scheming to break into it, undermining architecture’s implicit sense of security.
* * *
We snapped a few more pictures at Leslie’s grave before leaving the cemetery behind and heading back into the streets of Brooklyn. It was not hard to wonder when anyone had last come to see Leslie’s grave. After all, there had been no evidence of previous visitors. I’d only half-jokingly been expecting to find a set of lockpicks there—or an old skeleton key tucked into the grass as a form of tribute—but there was nothing. Just a twisted, old tree, some heavily worn headstones for people other than Leslie, and the leaden-gray skies that made late spring seem more like the first week of autumn.
In the very definition of what makes a building, in the shadows of our streets, in dark cars roaming our neighborhoods—perhaps even looking down at you now through an air vent, listening to your family’s dinner conversation, counting down the hours till you put away the dishes, turn off the lights, and go to sleep—these secret agents of the built environment lie waiting. Burglars are as much a part of architecture as the buildings they hope to break into.
References and Citations
Parts of chapter 2 previously appeared in Cabinet magazine; parts of chapter 3 previously appeared in Icon magazine; parts of chapters 3 and 6, originally written for the book, previously appeared in a different form on Gizmodo; parts of chapter 4 previously appeared on newyorker.com; and various parts of this book previously appeared in a different form on my own blog, BLDGBLOG (bldgblog.com). Thanks to Sina Najafi at Cabinet and to novelist Will Wiles (formerly my editor at Icon) for their input.
There is much to read on the life of George Leonidas Leslie. A good place to start is Herbert Asbury’s still-fascinating book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1927), where Leslie is introduced as “The King of the Bank Robbers,” or George Washington Walling’s memoir, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (New York: Caxton Book Concern, 1887). Leslie’s life was also the focus of a useful biography by J. North Conway called King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2009), which describes Leslie’s arrival in New York City, the criminals he associated with, and his sophisticated use of duplicate vaults and architectural surrogates for training.
For more on the life of Marm Mandelbaum, Conway’s book is also a valuable resource; however, specific details in this chapter, including descriptions of Mandelbaum’s fake chimney and her criminal headquarters on Rivington Street in Manhattan, come from “The Life and Crimes of ‘Old Mother’ Mandelbaum” by Karen Abbott (Smithsonian.com, September 6, 2011), and “A Queen Among Thieves: Mother Mandelbaum’s Vast Business” (New York Times, July 24, 1884).
A great architectural introduction to the Gilded Age in New York City and elsewhere—albeit focusing primarily on the decades after Leslie’s death—is Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008) by Wayne Craven.
Bruce Schneier discusses his idea of the “defector” in Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive (Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons, 2012).
Tales of burglaries and heists gone wrong are almost too numerous to believe. The specific cases mentioned in this chapter come from the following news stories: “Burglar May Have Used Pet Doors to Break In” (Tony Rizzo, Kansas City Star, February 2013); “Mystery at the Monastery Ends as CCTV Reveals ‘Chamber of Secrets’ Daring Thief” (Paul Webster, Guardian, June 2003); “Man Writes Novel Chapter in Annals of Library Thefts” (Laurie Becklund, Los Angeles Times, April 1991); “The Doheny Library Book Thief” (USC Digital Folklore Archives, April 2014); “Burglar Squeezes Through Drop-Off Box at Moultrie Business” (Ashton Pellom, WALB ABC News 10, February 2013); “Burglar Breaks Through Wall to Rob Store Again” (Jeff Smith, NBCDFW, March 2013); “Burglar Punches Holes in Apartments to Steal TVs, Electronics” (WBALTV, April 2013); “‘Drywall Burglar’ Set to Appear in Court” (Jessica Anderson, Baltimore Sun, July 2013); “Drawn to Food and Liquor, Burglar Gains a Stiff Term” (Wendy Ruderman, New York Times, September 2012); “Serial Burglar Who Tunneled Through Walls Sentenced to at Least 28 Years in Prison” (New York County District Attorney’s Office, September 2012); “The People of the State of New York Against Shawn McAleese” (SCI No. 3586/2012); “Alleged Burglar Found Hiding Inside Building Wall” (Shellie Nelson, WQAD8 Quad Cities, January 2013); “Burglar Caught After Getting Stuck in JCPenney Wall” (Tiffany Choquette, ABC6 Providence, July 2013); “Police: Would-Be RI Thief Found Trapped in Wall” (Associated Press, July 2013); “‘Moss Man’ Attempts Rock Museum Break-In” (CBS News, October 2010); “Naked Burglar Gets Stuck in Milwaukee Vet Clinic Air Vent” (Ashley Luthern, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 2013); “FBI: Bank Robbery Charges Against Man Pulled from Air Duct in Oak Lawn” (Deanese Williams-Harris, Chicago Tribune, June 2012); “Burglar’s Toe Gives Hiding Spot Away” (Maryanne Twentyman, Waikato Times, December 2013); and “Thief Caught After Leaving Ear Print at 80 Robberies” (AFP, May 2013).
The incredible story of Operation Stagehand comes from Ronald Kessler’s book The Secrets of the FBI (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011). Another useful resource on this topic is the FBI’s own collection of “surreptitious entry” files, available online as a thirty-part sequence of PDFs called “Surreptitious Entries (Black Bag Jobs).” The FBI’s definition of burglary also comes from the FBI website (fbi.gov).