A portrait of the Charter Oak hangs in a frame made from the Charter Oak.

This sculpture commemorates the first instance of an American president pardoning a turkey.

The early American colonists were such ferocious drinkers the law actually required every town to have a tavern.

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

The oldest place in Hartford is a cemetery with thousands of bodies stacked beneath the grass.

The former home of Samuel Clemens and family remembers the happiest period of the author's life.

A wunderkammer hidden on the top floor of the Hartford statehouse.

This old estate is a remnant of when the Bronx was a popular summer destination for wealthy New Yorkers.

Manhattan’s Battery Park has a whimsical carousel full of spinning, glowing fish.

Piano-making empire filled with 200-year-old steam machines still churning out 1,000 instruments a year.

Micro-distillery in Brooklyn produces New York’s first homemade rum since Prohibition.

This micro-industry of Latino cuisine along Red Hook's Ball Fields represents a victory in a food fight with the city.

This unusual apartment building may be Brooklyn's own version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

This eclectic sculpture garden in Brooklyn, home to a bizarre collection of art, was once a run-down junkyard.

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

A riverfront park that both remediated and preserved its industrial past.

The mosaic Star of David at the front of this store hints that it's no ordinary Italian grocer.

Seriously good slices of Sicilian pizza lurk at the back of the Bronx's oldest enclosed market.

The longest step street in the city.

Built in the 1920s, this co-op in the Bronx feels more like an Italian villa than a typical New York apartment building.

The impeccably spiced roast pork buns at this bakery are worth the wait.

Established in 1937, the oldest candy shop in New York City boasts a rainbow-colored inventory that would make Willy Wonka envious.

A goddess-topped water fountain in Chicago was created thanks to the dreams of a thirsty newsboy.

After surviving abandonment, this powerful Latin American mural is alive again.