It may appear to be a fancy junk yard, but each item has a story to tell and a lesson to impart.

Odd, decrepit fountain honors Chicago author who had mixed feelings about his hometown.

This cheerfully-named branch of the Chicago River is the fetid result of years of blood, entrails, and meatpacking waste.

Less a museum than a bizarre fantasy world created by artists and engineers.

House of vintage taxidermy and Steampunk sculptures in a quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood.

Where beautiful signs live on forever.

This icon of the Atomic Age now lays dormant.

An 18th-century Catholic church converted into an eccentric temple of music and bacchanalia.

This restaurant offers a side of antiques, curios, and a bathroom chock full of owls.

Mutant vegetables, transgenic mosquitos, and atomic rodents span the walls of this one-of-a-kind museum.

This permanent exhibition celebrates the finest of our heartless automatons both real and fictional.

A beautiful oddities shop crammed with strange and morbid curiosities.

The faint remains of a Polish news empire still linger.

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

This lovely, if imposing, piece of Canadian gothic is possibly the most photographed hotel in the world.

This 1836 church, constructed by formerly enslaved people, honors a leader in Afrocentric music.

An abandoned castle owned and ignored by Masons carries a cursed history.

Eccentric concrete mansion and museum designed and built by hand from the inside out.