NYC is a vibrant and wonderful place full of surprises and landmarks located all around. The city has lots of amazing and fun things to do for everyone. You should explore this vast metropolis and find the hidden gems not visited by many people.
Yes, it has quite a lot of weird and unusual places hidden in its underbelly and not many know about their existence! So, are you up to taking the veil off those hidden gems somewhere in the heart of the city? You should as this is how great cities are felt to the core.
Doing this means you aim to discover what hardly gets attention from the commoners and big-spending visitors to the city. Go and find these excitingly cool yet secret places and make your trip truly special.
Here’s some really weirds place in NYC you should check out:
Dream House
Take a walk down Church Street in Tribeca and you will come across a black door with a puzzling white sign that reads, the Dream House. It’s a place to experience the dynamic world of sound and light at their surreal best. This eccentric home is a reflection of some sort of optical oddity where neon pink reflections of light merge with ever-fluctuating sound waves to delight the senses. You need to be completely still here to experience the magic of light and sound together against the backdrop of resonating sounds.
Beekman Street
An abandoned 9-story building in NYC looks like some sort of oddity but it does exist and that too, in the heart of Manhattan’s Financial District. This building is truly beautiful and seems to have lots of secrets up its sleeves. This 19th century building made in Victorian-style is in great condition and also has detailed cast-iron railings and ceilings embellished all over.
Evolution Nature Store
Visit the Evolution Nature Store and gaze at the unique natural history collectibles. Nowhere else in the city could you hope to find this rich collection of natural history objects and curios. Every corner of this wood-panelled store is filled with objects and stuff that have some mystery to unravel. From fossils to seashells to skulls and skeletons – you name it and this place has it all. You could coax the staff into sharing rich details and knowledge about these objects and their natural history. A giant sloth skeleton remains a major attraction here in Manhattan’s SoHo art district.
Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital Ruins
A visit to the Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital Ruins gives you a great understanding of the deadly disease that smallpox once was to the entire world. Located on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, this 18th-century hospital still preserves the iconic Gothic Revival style. The building is in ruins since 1950 and it was later declared a city landmark in 1975. It’s preserved but is yet to undergo any renovation attempt and it’s not open for tours also.
Obscura Antiques and Oddities
This place is great to get a peek into medical history and gain a lot of knowledge of the medical scenes during the early part of 18th century. This antique shop in the East Village area of Manhattan gives you all what you’d crave to know about anatomical revolution. The store has a full Auzoux medical model and a huge variety of medical antiques. From medical art prints to taxidermy to photograph to lots of other medical memorabilia, this place has a lot of quench for your medical curiosity.
Bloody Angle: Doyers Street
In Manhattan, it’s quite unusual to see a street with a 90-degree curve on it. But when you come across one, your curiosity is bound to arouse. This is what Doyers Street does – named after a Dutch immigrant of the 18th century. Linking Pell Street and Bowery in Chinatown, the street is a true testimony of the ‘Tong Wars” of the early 20th century. This street corner is also known as “Bloody Angle” as it once became the site of perhaps the most number of murders in the USA. Tunnels are also found running beneath the street.
23 Skidoo!: Flatiron Building
When this towering and a beautiful building came up, many thought it would get blown over sooner rather than later. Such a bizarre and quirky design it had that the building gradually attained fame as a result. It never did collapse in its existence of over 100 years which is a testimony of its architectural finesse and designing brilliance. The eddies of wind that was created due to the unusual design of the Flatiron building caused skirts to whiz up giving this place sort of an iconic stature. Back then, 23rd street was a place for young men to congregate and wait for the skirts to flutter.
Overall, these unusual and weird places should form the core of your itinerary once you want to experience the unexplored side of NYC.