In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

Antiques by the Bay.

Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

A working model of the entire San Francisco Bay and much of the Sacramento River Delta, complete with regular tides that change every 14 minutes.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

This turn of the century masterpiece has a mysterious goaty interloper.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

An elaborate gift from Claus Spreckels is now a piece of San Francisco history.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

Furniture tries to escape an abandoned building in San Francisco.

A true roadside icon standing on the same plains that the herds once roamed.

This 4,000-foot-diameter hole is touted as "the most well known, best preserved meteorite crater on Earth."

Eclectic architecture in the woods of New York.