Places alessandralee Wants to Go

Two mermen, eternally spitting into each other's mouths.

An abandoned asylum once on the cutting edge of lobotomies may be reborn as a Christian college.

This abandoned caretaker's apartment is one of 13 left in the New York Public Library system.

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.

Every year model trains zip through a miniature New York City that's now 150 landmarks strong.

This narrow shop in the East Village hosts a matchmaking service for the new millennium.

One of the largest festivals of flowers in North America takes place, appropriately, in the Flower City.

The abandoned grounds and derelict greenhouses of this once-magnificent Edwardian estate are now a nature preserve open for exploration.

The name of this tiny pocket park tucked between two buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side is Latin for its location: "seventy-one."

Wall Street has a new heroine, a bronze statue of a small but fierce girl.

These expertly crafted, scientifically accurate glass sea creatures were once an international phenomenon.

This backwater graveyard in the Hamptons became a trendy burial spot and posthumous status symbol for famous artists.

The world's largest collection of materials relating to lesbian history is housed in a Brooklyn townhouse.

This wall on a street corner in Lower Manhattan has been a blank canvas for a rotation of renowned artists since the 1980s.

The Binghamton area is home to six of the last remaining hand-carved vintage carousels.

This futuristic airport terminal was abandoned for decades before reopening as a hotel—with a vintage plane of its own parked out back.

A hands-on traveling collection of the innovative devices of yesteryear.

A way to take your secrets to someone else's grave.

A bronze ballot box stands at the spot where Susan B. Anthony voted illegally.

A room hidden behind a swinging shelf in the children's section.

A giant steel sculpture with animals in its shadows.

The first American home of the isolated, egalitarian religion has a trove of Shaker architecture and artifacts.

A historic recreation of the golden age of the Erie Canal, abandoned for some time, slowly being restored.

Three acres of mythology-inspired sculptures are visible from the highway.