From this desk Al Hirschfeld drew his influential caricatures of the 20th century's Broadway stars.

A treasure trove of artifacts, books, and artwork from the "golden age" of exploration.

Bowl in splendor, if you're lucky.

This nostalgic blast from the grooming past is also a working barbershop.

New York's oldest and possibly grandest keeper of books.

Even for Egyptian royalty, the afterlife was bring-your-own-beef.

A New York garbage depot holds a secret collection of weird and wonderful refuse.

This speakeasy continues the Prohibition-era legacy of Harlem's jazzy Swing Street.

This hidden library of physiological ephemera contains centuries worth of knowledge on the vim and viscera of the human body.

This giant boulder is sandwiched between apartment complexes in upper Manhattan.

Ride the subways of yesteryear.

Just your average Marie Antoinette–themed speakeasy in an abandoned 19th-century subway tunnel.

Have a steam and some blini at this cafe in a century-old bathhouse.

Dodge prohibitionists and slide through the telephone booth in Crif Dogs.

This little museum is built on a theater that was once a wildly elaborate speakeasy.

A hands-on traveling collection of the innovative devices of yesteryear.

Love, knishes, and best wishes from this legendary Lower East Side bakery.

Become a prohibition rebel.

A trove of century-old litho stones from the Puck Building's printing days were discovered behind a cellar wall, and are now hanging in the store.

This iconic tattoo shop has its own onsite museum with artifacts from the early history of modern body art.

America's oldest Eastern European synagogue provided the immigrants of crowded Lower East Side tenements a space of sanctuary.

This small New York museum examines Chinese history from its origins right up to its arrival in the city.

The only gallery in New York dedicated to olfactory art and the exploration of scent in art.

Built just after the American Revolution, the oldest row house in New York City still stands in Chinatown.