Same here! I moved to Lansing St. 2 years ago and so I always walked past the building. The fact it had no windows was pretty weird and concerning and so I often joked that it was probably a spy agency/wire tapping operation. I was pretty surprised when I read that it pretty much was built for that purpose.
You honestly couldn't have designed a building that could have stuck out and raised more suspicion than this one.
"I often joked that it was probably a spy agency/wire tapping operation. I was pretty surprised when I read that it pretty much was built for that purpose."
The building wasn't built to be a spy agency or a wire-tapping operation. It's an AT&T switching center. Among other things, it's the terminus of a number of important trans-Pacific fiber cables, and it's been around for longer than the NSA has been rumored to have a room inside of it.
No, sorry, but there's absolutely nothing "weird" about a windowless telephone exchange building. At one time, every single neighborhood in this country had one.
This building was not created for this, it's just an old Bell building that had some empty space which could be repurposed.
You honestly couldn't have designed a building that could have stuck out and raised more suspicion than this one.