Curious crustaceans support an obelisk from ancient Egypt that now stands in modern-day Central Park.

The oldest family-run luncheonette in New York, last renovated in 1948, still serves food and drinks the old-fashioned way.

The walls are decorated with whimsical murals painted by the creator of the Madeline franchise.

A tiny museum housed in a New York freight elevator specializes in the "overlooked, dismissed, or ignored."

An uber-secure, windowless tower of doom in the center of Manhattan is an NSA spyscraper.

Once the tallest building in the world and the site of "the highest dinner ever held in New York" this building now holds the most expensive penthouse in the city.

This beautiful building in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District was empty for decades.

A Wisconsin kitsch palace from the 1930s lives its second life in 21st-century Brooklyn.

A B.Y.O.B. Mexican cantina lives inside one of the last tortilla factories in Brooklyn.

This Queens beer hall preserves a German culture and language that is all but lost.

A hidden architectural treasure in New York's Brooklyn.

A strip of modern stores in historic buildings.

Once a popular watering hole among longshoremen and shipyard workers, this neighborhood treasure spans more than 100 years of Red Hook history.

The gilded vestiges of a sterling department store can still be found in a Brooklyn shopping center.

Tucked in a nondescript downtown Brooklyn mall is a bar containing a remarkable turn of the century anatomical wax collection last seen in 1920s Berlin.

Michael Jackson got Bad and Crocodile Dundee walked on heads in this iconic Brooklyn subway station.

Under a glass sidewalk lie the remains of some of Manhattan's oldest buildings.

This Wall Street bar was once a hub of revolutionary activity where Washington famously bid farewell to his troops.

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

Where now stands a 42-story condominium tower of marble, glass and steel was once the central market of New York’s slave trade.

This lower Manhattan bar is set up in an old bank vault that rests beneath a skyscraper that hides even more historic splendor.

A beautiful and abandoned New York subway station from 1904, complete with chandelier.

A masterpiece of LGBT art has been restored in what may now be the most valuable restroom in America.

This slender three-story building has also had several famous residents.