Light bulbs, scrap wood, and tinfoil comprise this homemade throne of the gods.

In the basement of the U.S. Capitol Building is a hidden storage room full of ornate floor tiles leftover from the 1850s.

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

Once the supplier for noteworthy projects like the National Cathedral, this old brickworks now lies abandoned.

Perhaps the most scandalous statue of America's first president.

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

These recently uncovered walls are all that's left of Washington, D.C's first defense contractor.

Home to a vast and influential collection of Shakespeareana.

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

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

The actual model from the original "Star Trek" series is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

A Spiritualist house of worship where believers communicate with the dead in the spirit world.

An Industrial Revolution-era public work that purified water using nothing but sand.

The Byzantine, pre-Columbian, and medieval art at this stately mansion are some of the most under-appreciated collections in D.C.

People escaping slavery may have hidden inside a corpse vault.

This lonely waterfront memorial to the men of the Titanic was erected by the "Women of America."

Fittingly, America's museum of architecture is itself a magnificently designed old building.

A hidden gem on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

A derelict bit of transportation infrastructure hidden in the woods.

During the Industrial Revolution this “Temple of Invention” was full of intricate miniature machines and gadgets.

There's a 12-foot-tall replica of the Washington Monument hidden under a manhole nearby.

Enormous piles of historically significant stones, dumped by Congress in a forest, and abandoned for 60 years.

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

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