A fashion designer's dazzling world of Japanese collectibles is hidden in a warehouse downtown.

After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.

Founded by a high school teacher, this poetry magazine became a center for all things literary.

L.A.'s oldest operating bowling alley is a beautifully restored homage to its speakeasy days.

More than 500 unique and specially designed cases collected by D.C.'s "Harmonica Case Man."

Before Nixon, "watergate" meant canals.

Legend has it that President Grant’s frequent drinking in the lobby gave rise to the term “lobbyist.”

The span is crooked and made from two older recycled bridges.

The monument's pointy aluminum tip has been melted down by repeated lightning strikes.

The towering figures were created from the cemetery's fallen old-growth trees.

The oldest building in the District of Columbia was preserved because of a mistaken connection to George Washington.

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

Obscure Freemasons still live in D.C.’s largest private residence.

This lovely pocket park is one of the most under appreciated in D.C.

A historic ruin just 20 feet away from a busy highway onramp.

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."

Where the U.S. government kept its actual treasure, before Fort Knox.

Cold War intelligence agents monitored communist embassies from an attic in a former pigeon coop.

D.C.'s first central library was born out of a chance encounter with the philanthropist whose name it bears.

A rotating cast of guys and dolls in front of a Washington, D.C. building.

The national park was once a plantation estate.

There's a crumbling old mansion inside the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Largest Roman Catholic church in North America.