The crown jewel of the Queens Museum is a nearly 10,000-square-foot architectural model of the city originally built for the 1964 World's Fair.

A Manhattan office building is home to the world's largest chess board.

A small peaceful park and waterfall tucked amid the urban grind of Midtown Manhattan.

NYC's legendary underground network for bovine transportation.

Once America's longest-manned military fort, now an abandoned hulk.

A discreet little stairway on St. Nicholas Avenue leads to a quaint and unexpected cobblestone street of 19th century wooden rowhouses.

A former insane asylum despised by Nelly Bly and Charles Dickens is now fashionable apartments.

Touching mementoes from those who didn't make it back from World War I still hang in one of New York's oldest bars.

An artist's cute bronze subway sculptures belie his violent artistic past.

America's greatest forgotten garden and the former stomping grounds of Son of Sam.

Long the exclusive domain of birds and vagabonds, this little-known Central Park peninsula is open to the public once more.

New York City's only preserved family home from the 19th century.

The remnants of two World's Fairs are here, complete with a 12-story globe, a mini-Manhattan, and a UFO-shaped pavilion.

First a horse rendering plant, then a 19th century landfill, this beach is full of glass from thousands upon thousands of broken bottles.

Hidden in plain sight on a pair of Manhattan subway tunnels are a pair of public instruments that sing to each other.

A DIY art gallery/music venue/lecture hall dedicated to video game culture.

Hidden in Central Park's Ramble is a troublesome cave buried just beneath the surface.

Read a book next to a Midtown waterfall.

The feral felines of Roosevelt Island have a small army of allies and an abandoned hospital all to themselves.

Try not to get slimed in Tribeca.

Hordes of precariously balanced stone figures crowd the shores of the Hudson River.

Murals of the wild parties once held on the frozen River Thames.

The watery entrance for condemned prisoners heading to the Tower of London is still visible along the Thames.

Six ravens are kept captive (but well-fed) at the Tower of London to prevent the fall of the Crown.