An eerie diorama that captures the majestic nature of a few prehistoric-looking beasts.

This taxidermy scene brings the struggle for survival in the Indian jungle to a quiet corner of a Manhattan museum.

This miniature village stays behind in the Breuer Building, even as the museums around it come and go.

If it hadn't been caught in time, a flaw in the design of this Manhattan skyscraper could have led to its collapse.

Fake subway tiles were installed to cover a design that resembled the Confederate flag—it's unclear if the resemblance was intentional.

This poignant display is now a memorial to these regionally extinct species.

One of the most dazzling dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History is also one of the oldest.

This morbid scene depicts the Darwinian drama of death on the African savannah.

The one-time office of the architectural firm that ushered in the Gilded Age is now a Club Monaco.

Creating this diorama spurred naturalist Carl Akeley to begin advocating to protect the apes.

A playground the size of a city block is a modernist monument to civic values and public housing.

Two large-scale sculptures of Adam and Eve greet visitors in the nude at the Time Warner Center in NYC.

This monument to a veteran of the Mexican-American War is one of only two in Manhattan that serve as an actual mausoleum.

This Manhattan skyscraper is a reminder of the brief but glorious age of urban air taxis.

This magnificent herd of stampeding elephants has been frozen in time for over a century.

Nope, not Washington Irving's house.

Here be dragons.

Twenty-three trees, each paired with a basalt stone, line a street in Chelsea, continuing an urban project started by German Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys.

This simple Manhattan salt house is artfully shaped... well, like a giant granule of salt.

This Upper East Side apartment co-op was designed as a tuberculosis sanitarium.

These small stands sell Malian snacks to worshippers and passersby after Friday prayers in Harlem.

Manhattan and the Bronx have been playing tug-of-war over this former island neighborhood for more than a century.

Depression-era fun lives on in this Harlem museum dedicated to the sport of the street.

Gang fights don't just happen on the streets, they happen under them too.