This abandoned artificial island off the coast of New York City is now home to dozens of harbor seals.

A basement pool hall is the front for some of the best Dominican food in New York City.

A one-ton statue of Steve Rogers beautifies the entry to a Brooklyn Bed, Bath & Beyond.

An everyday Jackson Heights bodega conceals a Mexican seafood paradise.

A memorial marks the library lobby where Langston Hughes' ashes are buried.

For almost a century, this East Village newsstand has served egg creams to beats, hippies, punks, and everything in between.

You don't have to be an ambassador to dine like one.

This secluded ruin was once a home for exotic plants.

Behind a grungy bodega facade, a Poblano family serves rich, home-cooked meals.

Here, exhibits come with a side of edible history.

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

A Collegiate Gothic quadrangle that surrounds an 18th century secondary school whose financing came from the likes of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, among others.

Manhattan and the Bronx have been playing tug-of-war over this former island neighborhood for more than a century.

An exhibition space dedicated to American outsider art created between the 18th and 21st centuries.

Crammed into several rooms of a Staten Island home, this museum is a vodka-soaked paean to the pleasures of drinking.

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

Those belting out show tunes might not realize this piano bar marks the site where Thomas Paine died in 1809.

A cargo of beautiful music.

Unusual books about food and drink abound in this 19th-century New York townhouse.

The one-time epicenter of American songwriting is now a little remembered Manhattan commercial block.

One of the few remaining American elm trees in New York’s Tompkins Square Park was the birthplace of a new religion.

Down a stairway in the East Village, you could once read a plaque describing an alternate history of a fictional version of Manhattan.

Just your average Marie Antoinette–themed speakeasy in an abandoned 19th-century subway tunnel.

A whimsical, but often overlooked clock in Park Avenue.