Usual network wiring maintenance leads to discovery of secret part of building.

A couple years ago, I was cleaning up the rack of an IDF closet in a sparsely populated part of my building on the 2nd floor. At the time, the switch was jam packed with maybe 10 devices, but now it's down to one phone. I noticed, behind the rack, one step, then a sheet of plywood screwed to the wall. This is on the main floor of an open room with a mezzanine. I come out of the closet, look up, and pinpoint where the top of said staircase should exit. I go up there and look, but it's just an office. I'd romanticized buried treasure and other fortunes are buried inside this open cavity, not unlike my own "Goonies" adventure.

It's been in the back of my mind for several years.

My company has been in this building for over 80 years, I believe; we were bought about a year ago, and the parent co. plans on moving us to a new building. The time to investigate is nigh.

Friday night (I work evenings), I got the motivation to finally confirm there was indeed a staircase behind the network rack.

There's an empty section of conduit in the closet and I stuck a long piece of wood down the pipe to see if I could find where it protruded on the floor below. I didn't find it where I expected, which was the IDF closet on the first floor. I went into an adjacent office and pushed up the ceiling tiles. I found the piece of wood. I held my phone up into the drop ceiling space and took a couple pics. Sure enough, I found the underside of the staircase. I panned left and took some more pictures. To my surprise, I found ANOTHER SET OF STAIRS!

This old building is full of interesting nooks and crannies. I'll be sad to leave it behind. We had some 30 and 40 year employees, but most have retired. Now there's no one in the company who knows what exists behind the plywood, let alone set eyes or hands on it. With reinvigorated energy, I'm seeing what's behind that sheet of plywood in the IDF closet that sparked this adventure.

The tl;dr is that I poked around my company's old building and found some secret/abandoned infrastructure.