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

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

The neighborhood church casts a breast-shaped shadow that locals have come to call the “two o’clock titty.”

The only intersection in America where the buildings on all four corners were built pre-Revolutionary War.

The oldest continuously inhabited street in America.

This stone gatehouse was once the entrance to a historic mountain resort, and it had a cameo in a cheesy cult horror movie.

A once grand hotel is being retaken by the wilderness it once capitalized on.

Herman Melville wrote 'Moby Dick' in this landmark 18th-century house surrounded by farmland.

This "life-size" depiction of Mickey Mouse as a half-lobster is both whimsical and a bit creepy, standing guard over the Boston waterfront.

The oldest Italian café in Boston, this spot also serves as a veritable museum of vintage coffee ephemera.

Shelves covered in dozens of coffee bean varieties fill this North End institution.

Stolen goods adorn the organ at Old North Church.

This unassuming stone commemorates a condiment factory gone up in smoke.

One of the last remaining movie theatres in the country that features a rear-projection system.

This cemetery served as the only official burial grounds in Cambridge for nearly 200 years.

Impossibly life-like natural history models created out of glass by a father and son.

The classic Christmas carol was written at this Massachusetts tavern in 1850.

A display of magnificent stained glass windows is the first exhibit of its kind.

Chicago's Navy Pier on Lake Michigan was a training hub for aircraft carrier pilots during WWII.

A curious collection of miniatures in a quiet corner of the Chicago Children's Museum.

The iconic Chicago sculpture hides a beautiful and easily overlooked plaque on the backside.

Fragments of architectural wonders from around the globe are embedded in the newspaper building's walls.

The gravestone of the man who designed the plastic pink flamingo is adorned with his most famous creation.

Gaudí's famously flamboyant architectural style is on full display in this sprawling park and garden.