A 2026 gift guide for the secret compartment lover

During Prohibition, a gossip columnist wrote that federal agents had never raided the 21 Club, a speakeasy on West 52nd Street in Manhattan. They raided it the next day. The owners, Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns, lost part of their stash, and they hired a designer named Frank Buchanan to build a system of camouflaged doors, invisible chutes and revolving bars so it wouldn't happen again.

The bar was the first line of defense. If agents came in, one button set off an alarm telling customers to finish their drinks, and a second button under the bar flipped the back shelves so the bottles slid down a chute into the city sewer.

The rest of the liquor was next door. A steep staircase led down from the kitchen to a secret door cut into the cellar of the brownstone next door, No. 19. You opened it by pushing an 18-inch meat skewer into a hole in the wall, like a key. Since the stash was technically in the neighbor's basement, the staff could say there was no alcohol on the premises. The cellar is still there, and over the years it has held 2,000 cases of wine, including private collections belonging to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren.

The 21 Club's hiding places had to get past federal agents. Most of the ones on this list have lower stakes: a book with the pages cut out, a ring with a lid, a nickel that comes apart and a couple of novels about houses with secrets in the walls. For the very committed, there's also a bookcase that swings open like a door, a real secret passageway, and two places to go find hidden doors in person. Pick the items you want with "Add to wishlist," or take the whole list with the button at the bottom:

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The hollow book

A book safe is a real hardcover with the middle of the pages cut out. The StreetWise one is lined with velour and has an inside space of about 6 3/4 by 3 3/4 by 1 1/4 inches.

Making one takes an old book, Mod Podge or white glue, a utility knife with a fresh blade, a straight edge and some clamps or heavy books to press it while the glue dries. Adafruit has a step-by-step guide.

The poison ring

Despite the name, rings with a hidden compartment under a hinged cover held a lot more than poison. In the Middle Ages they often held relics of saints, like hair, bone or teeth, which were supposed to protect the wearer, and Renaissance aristocrats used them for cologne, locks of hair and portraits. Lucrezia Borgia was said to dispose of political rivals with one, but hiding the taste of poison and fitting a fatal dose into a ring was hard enough that the GIA doubts there were many victims. Peter Stone's version has the Claddagh design, two hands holding a crowned heart, on a hinged top over a compartment about 1.2 cm across.

The hollow nickel

In June 1953, a Brooklyn Eagle paperboy dropped a nickel he'd just been paid, and it split in half. Inside was a tiny photograph of a series of numbers, too small to read. The FBI lab found the coin had been made from two different nickels, with a tiny hole drilled through the R in TRUST so it could be pried open. The numbers stayed a mystery for four years, until a Soviet intelligence officer named Reino Häyhänen defected in 1957 and led the FBI to the spy Rudolf Abel. Abel was convicted and, in 1962, traded for the American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

The Covert Coin is a real US nickel that has been hollowed out. You set it in the included ring and strike it on a table to pop the back off. It fits a folded note or a microSD card.

Two books with hidden things in the walls

The Secret Panel is the 25th Hardy Boys mystery, from 1946. Frank and Joe help a stranger who introduces himself as John Mead, owner of a nearby estate, then find out Mead died five years earlier, and end up at a mansion whose carved doors have no visible knobs or keyholes.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is John Bellairs's 1973 novel, with drawings by Edward Gorey. An orphan named Lewis moves in with his uncle Jonathan, who turns out to be a magician, and finds out the house's former owners built a clock into the walls that could wipe out humankind. It was made into a movie with Jack Black and Cate Blanchett.

A bookcase door

A Murphy Door is a working bookcase that swings open on a ball-bearing hinge. It's built in Utah and Kentucky and ships already hung in its own frame, so it can replace an existing door, ordered to match a 24 to 36 inch doorway. The page lists two people and two to four hours to install it, and the shelves are rated for 400 pounds.

A real secret passageway

Steve Humble worked for Boeing and designed surgical lasers before he started Creative Home Engineering in Gilbert, Arizona, which he says has built about 5,000 secret doors and passageways over 20 years. Prices run from about $2,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company's past projects include sliding and gothic bookcases, a sliding fireplace, a revolving fireplace, a lifting staircase and a fake electrical panel that hides a door.

Gillette Castle

William Gillette played Sherlock Holmes on stage more than 1,300 times over 33 years, and between 1914 and 1919 he built himself a stone castle in Connecticut. He designed its 47 doors himself, each with its own carved wooden latch, and placed mirrors so he could keep an eye on his locked liquor cabinet from the second-floor balcony. A hidden passage let him make surprise entrances, and a trick bar top was the source of a lot of practical jokes. The state bought the castle in 1943 for $30,000. Tours run daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day, with a holiday program on weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and hold 18 people each.

The House of Eternal Return

Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return opened in Santa Fe in March 2016, in a bowling alley the art collective bought with backing from George R.R. Martin. More than 100 artists spent about two years turning the 33,000-square-foot building into a Victorian house whose family has vanished, with hidden passageways and tunnels leading to other rooms. One way in is through the refrigerator, and crawling into the fireplace leads to a glowing ice cave.

In conclusion

The list above copies into a new WishPoster list with the Vault theme, or you can start one from scratch.