4 discoveries
24-hour donut shop famous for its colossal 32-foot giant donut sign atop the building. An LA icon since 1952, featured in films, commercials, and countless photo pilgrimages.
New York City's only hand-wound sidewalk clock — a 1,500-pound, 17-foot cast-iron tower clock built in 1910 for a Michigan jeweler, rescued decades later and installed in Tribeca's Bogardus Plaza, where volunteers still wind it by hand every week.
Seventeen interconnected steel-and-mosaic spires — the tallest nearly 100 feet — built single-handedly by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia over 33 years, with no scaffolding, no welds, and no plans. A National Historic Landmark in the Watts neighborhood of LA.
A six-story elephant-shaped building from 1881 standing on the Jersey Shore — the oldest surviving roadside animal architecture in America, and a National Historic Landmark.
