Amid the bustle and noise of the Financial District hides a secluded garden oasis above the city streets.

Elevated freight railway turned wildly successful urban park.

The little-known, 300-year history of the area includes former lives as a bustling tobacco port, parking lot, and industrial dump.

The oldest continuously operating fish market in the United States.

Washington's iconic carousel has a nice piece of Civil Rights history.

One critic described it as "middle Mussolini, early Ramses, and late Neiman-Marcus." Another called it an architectural "natural disaster."

The unique traffic pattern named for an influential urban planner is also known as the Pedestrian Scramble.

A historic neighborhood church is reborn as a psychedelic arts collective.

A derelict bit of transportation infrastructure hidden in the woods.

This grand gothic brewery has been pumping out suds for over a hundred years.

The only National Monument ever to go missing for nearly 50 years then resurface in a dump.

A bit of retro transportation flair preserved in the world's largest department store.

Yo, Adrian!

World's first "penitentiary," meant to be humane, drove men insane.

A girls' boarding school inspired by the Chicago World's Fair, once abandoned, now restored to strange and scenic glory.

The tallest The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple in the world soars above the Beltway.

The Grand Ole Opry's big voice came from a small home in rural Virginia where she was eventually buried.

The ruins of this long-abandoned unsuccessful gold mine can still be found.

A labor of love built by local hang-gliding enthusiasts, this ideal launch spot was outlawed by the authorities and has since been largely abandoned.

One of the only memorials dedicated to journalists who died in combat.

A museum dedicated to exhibiting remarkable outsider art.

The haunting "Hell House Altar" is one of the few remnants of an abandoned college that has been a magnet for local legends.

This abandoned sea fort has become an accidental bird sanctuary.

An FDR-era tuberculosis sanatorium has stood abandoned in the suburbs of the U.S. capital for over 30 years.