Places Maggie Mason Wants to Go

A model home in the Medical Examiner's Office in which grisly death scenes are staged to train forensic investigators.

An abandoned church gets a second life as a massive beer hall and event space.

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

Crammed into a Baltimore row house is an oddities shop that sells everything from skulls to dead insects.

It’s not hard to see why the historic Peabody Conservatory of Music’s library has been described as a “cathedral of books.”

Eighteen miniature death-scene dioramas.

This hidden gem of a garden has one of the only surviving Victorian ferneries in America.

Philadelphia boasts one of the best — and most often overlooked — traditional Japanese gardens in North America.

The world's third-largest crystal sphere has sat in the Penn Museum since 1927 with the exception of one outlandish theft.

One of the most enjoyable bits of history at Coney Island and “the most romantic ride in the world.”

Eccentric concrete mansion and museum designed and built by hand from the inside out.

The famed amusement district marks the beginning of summer with a wild procession of nautical creatures.

The origin of this mechanical boy was a mystery until he revealed his maker by writing it in perfect cursive.

Dr Barnes' $25 billion private collection of art and arboretum.

The world’s first penitentiary, meant to be humane, drove men insane.

The taxidermied remains of Charles Dickens' pet raven, which helped inspire one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poems.

An extraordinary collection of vampire-themed antiques lurks on the second floor of a store.

The first American department store, and home to the largest operating musical instrument in the world.

The sounds of the world's largest fully functioning pipe organ dazzle shoppers at a Philadelphia Macy's.

Find your state fair food favorites all year long.

In the early 1800s, surgery was also a show.

A rare view of a preserved Victorian science museum.

For more than 25 years, this Philadelphia store has been offering a wide selection of Victorian oddities and antiques.

A museum dedicated to the strange and extravagant costumes and memorabilia of the mummers, a tradition older than Philadelphia itself.