The Midwest's reigning king of surplus stores is full of nothing you need and everything you want.

An unusual assortment of art, furniture, and other curiosities.

Find out what it sounds like when doves cry at Prince's recording studio estate turned museum.

An architecturally-focused antique shop.

These curious caverns have been home to mushrooms, gangsters, and disco.

Funhouse of found art and participatory sculpture.

20,000 pieces in a Frank Gehry-designed building.

The famed architect designed this Minnesota gas station of the future with a lookout tower.

This lab's maddening silence is good for business but bad for sanity.

The controversial urban planner who designed Washington, D.C., was buried in Maryland, and can presently be found in Virginia.

A nostalgic bibliographic gem.

Home to a vast and influential collection of Shakespeareana.

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

The sci-fi villain is a little-known inhabitant of the U.S. capital's largest cathedral.

"Congress may voluntarily remain in session throughout the summer, in order that our Congressmen may be protected from the intolerable discomforts and dangers of the ordinary outdoor weather!”

Home to items never before seen by the public.

At 207 feet, one of the world's longest continuous escalators.

A wondrous old library overlooking the nation's capital.

An obscure public service from the U.S. government that redeems burnt, moldy, and soiled old greenbacks.

The institution is sitting on a goldmine of 21,000 paints, varnishes, pigments, and primers preserved for posterity.

This stunning blue and gold room changed cities twice before becoming part of the Smithsonian.

A hoard of sky catalogs, astrophysical journals, even the works of Galileo and Copernicus.

Decades before the scandal, this staircase on the river was a literal "water gate."

Giftshop catering to cryptozoologists and anyone with a sense of humor.