Places Edited by Ian Hall

This free, take-a-book shop seems like a trick but isn't.

There aren't too many operational funiculars around, but Pittsburgh has two!

This simple convenience store sits on the location where the Ouija board was named—and has a plaque to prove it.

Despite being stolen multiple times, this civic electrician's street corner Snoopy won't be stopped.

The last holdout of a pre-Civil War rebel who took the matter of slavery into his own hands.

A star fort along the C&O Canal in western Maryland that protected America in three wars.

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

This English-inspired Maryland garden is home to acres of opulent plant life including bushes shaped into an entire fox hunt.

This claimant to the title of "smallest church in the 48 states" doubles as an equally tiny, quasi-post office.

The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin was neighbors with Mark Twain while living in this Connecticut home.

One of New Jersey's oldest surviving buildings still bears the mark of our former British overlords.

From economic backbone of a community to deadly diving hole, these former stone quarries are now a park for rock climbers and graffiti artists.

The childhood home of one of America's greatest unsung troubadours still stands in a much changed Brooklyn neighborhood.

The sweetest graveyard in the world is filled with headstones for dearly de-pinted ice cream flavors.

This old-fashioned carhop restaurant gave the world the waffle cone.

This stunning Connecticut mansion is actually just a one-room-deep hoax.

Who needs fancy modern water slides when this giant North Carolina rock works just as well?

The house where John Wilkes Booth conspired with his co-conspirators.

This Connecticut chapel is a starkly modern, and surprisingly colorful, architectural rebel.

Collecting 700 years of mechanical death-dealing, the NRA's sprawling gun museum is a revealing testament to the American obsession with armament.

This museum devoted to the gothic author holds such interesting ephemera as his socks and walking stick.

This ancient sinkhole-turned-healing-pool is a treasure trove of archeological discoveries and may even be the Fountain of Youth.

Rediscovered after a century, the father of the American Navy was reinterred in something dredged up from Davy Jones’ locker.

This abandoned sea fort has become an accidental bird sanctuary.