Talk:Fake building

Strecker Memorial Laboratory

(Copied from Strecker Memorial Laboratory). Is this really a "fake building"? When I think of "fake building" I think of something like 58 Joralemon Street which appears to be a house but in reality is a facade blocking view of a tunnel. But the Strecker Memorial Laboratory is a building, it has simply been demolished, reconstructed, and repurposed. Mokadoshi (talk) 04:32, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you. Some of these entries that are well referenced do not pass a simple smell test. Holland tunnel ventilation buildings might be another case. They were purpose-built to be ventilation buildings without any intention to disguise to be another form of buildings. I think the Business Insider article is the one that dilutes this subject by including too many buildings. I would second a removal if there is a consensus. Z22 (talk) 05:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

The confused messaging of the mini-gallery

The mini-gallery "Unurbanized substations" in the #Twentieth century section, originally added here, has several aspects to it that really don't make sense: One, in the opinion of the original submitter, somewhat more clearly expressed in their original caption (since revised), these are both unurbanised substations – but that conclusion is dubious to say the least. I suspect most people would not agree. IMHO, the substation on the left is clearly urbanised, even if we were to concede that the way it is urbanised still makes it appear "old-fashioned and aberrational". The mini-gallery's title of "Unurbanized substations" is thus difficult to justify. But even if consensus were to be convincingly established that the picture on the left shows an urbanised substation, it would still be kind of iffy to just change the title to "Urbanized and unurbanized substations", because though that title might technically be accurate, the left image depicts a water substation while the right one depicts an electricity substation, which means this is really comparing apples with oranges. An unconcealed substation is not the subject of this article, but the image might still be justifiable if that substation were being compared and contrasted with a concealed/urbanised substation of the same kind. Only, it isn't: It's being juxtaposed with a substation of a very different kind, and one whose urbanisation status there evidently isn't even universal agreement on as yet. Hence, this mini-gallery in its present state is just very confusing, once you try and think about it. That's just confused messaging. What exactly is this supposed to show, and does it in fact show that? It's just not very clear. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 15:30, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I would agree that that title "Unurbanized substations" is confusing. The left is an urbarn substation and the right is a rural substation. I think the key to that comparison is more like concealed vs exposed substations? In term of what kind of substation it is, I think the image caption is not particularly correct. It's not a "hydro" substation, it is actually an electrical substation owned by either Toronto Hydro or Hydro One, not sure who is the actual owner. The place is called Toronto Hydro-Electric Dynamo House located at 532 Bay Street in Toronto and it has another name, Terauley Transformer Station. Z22 (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh, oh, that's interesting, and makes slightly more sense. So, with that in mind, how about these changes:

header   = Concealed and unconcealed substations
alt1     = An image of the Toronto Hydro-Electric Dynamo House, Canada. Frontal aspect, showing a period industrial facade.
caption1 = The Toronto Hydro-Electric Dynamo House, a listed building concealing a substation
alt2     = An image of an unconcealed substation in Warren, Minnesota with many metal parts fenced off in an open field.
caption2 = An unconcealed electrical substation in [[Warren, Minnesota]]

I'm not really sure about the alt captions; I'm not too experienced with those. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 20:59, 9 March 2025 (UTC)