A couple of times a year, they give pretty cool tours of the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, one of the major bridges across the river. Originally, the upper level of the bridge was for cars and pedestrians, and the lower level was for streetcars, but the streetcars went away not long after the bridge was finished, and now the lower level isn’t used for anything. Few non-locals have heard of it, but a lot have seen it: The remains of the underground streetcar station on the west end (Cleveland’s only subway station) were Loki’s secret lair in The Avengers.
My favorite spots in San Francisco are the sudden, unexpected views. Even after coming across them many times they can still take my breath away. These are some of the places I make sure to take visitors.
Two examples: driving north on 19th Avenue, which is a major N/S thoroughfare, you’re driving along and you see greenery ahead, which is Golden Gate Park, and then a bit later you see the nearest spire of the Golden Gate Bridge sort of floating above the green, and in the right light it is wonderful. Or, driving up Market St. where it goes uphill and turns into Portola Dr., and then you turn left on Diamond Hts Blvd, and as you go around the curve the whole city is spread out in front of you. Better, to me, than going up to Twin Peaks, partly because it catches you by surprise but also because it’s not nearly so windy down there, and the city is closer and more real-looking.
Other than that, there’s a whole cottage industry of finding and writing about little nooks and crannies around the city. I do volunteer tree care for young street trees, and one thing I love about that is that it takes me all over the city to places I never would have gone otherwise.
I don’t think Uvas Canyon County Park is known by many outside of the south bay area. Situated in a deep narrow canyon, there are 5 decent-sized waterfalls and lot of nice little cascades to see along the creekside trail that runs a couple of miles up the canyon. Of course the creek and falls don’t run much outside of the wet season, but it’s a good spot to hike almost any time of year.
In the Chicago suburbs, there is the Leaning Tower of Niles.
I’ve posted about his on another thread, but I highly encourage anyone visiting Oahu, Hawaii go to Hawaii’s Plantation Village, located in Waipahu, Hawaii. http://www.hawaiiplantationvillage.org/
It’s a recreation with some original homes of the various immigrant groups who made Hawaii the unique multi-cultural place it is. Be sure to get a guided tour as you’ll get just a fraction of plantation history with just the signs and displays. There’s even benches and tables where you can have your own lunch.
I guarantee your stories and perspective of Hawaii after your visit will be much different than just talking about Waikiki and the Polynesian Cultural Center.
It depends how you define local, but within an hour or so of me there are two nice ones.
The Marcella Sembrich Opera Museum in Bolton Landing, NY. Sembrich was a big name opera star in the late 1800s and the museum – her former teaching studio – holds all her memorabilia. They also have concerts in the summer.
The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY. The Hydes were millionaire paper factory owners with a love of art and a good eye for what has lasting value. The museum is based in the former Hyde family home (though a museum wing has been added) and the atmosphere is that of a house – furniture, bookcases, a solarium, bedrooms – with art on the wall. It sneaks up on you: I started admiring a painting than hung in a corner of the library, then read the description to realize it was a Rembrandt. There’s also work by Picasso, van Gogh, many of the French Impressionists, and many more, including many more modern artists.
Sutter’s Fort
We have a piece of Plymouth Rock here in Plymouth, Michigan.
And of course, we’re the historical home of the famous Daisy Red Ryder BB gun from A Christmas Story.
I was also going to mention the Big Duck. Since that’s been done already, I’ll throw in the Sandminers Monument. Most of the sand that went into the concrete used to build New York City was mined on Long Island’s Cow Neck peninsula (now Port Washington). A big deal locally, probably not so much to anyone else.
I’ve been there! It’s definitely a unique place. The home - and its well-manicured and -gardened grounds - is definitely nearly half of the draw.
Heh. I had the opposite experience at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Out of the corner of my eye from quite far away I saw lots of stuff that was clearly a Pollock or Tiffany for instance. One that did sneak up on me was a Bougereau, which I simply thought looked similar to him but did not think it likely to actually be by him since a lot of the Academic painters look similar.
Washington DC has a statue to the man who invented the screw propeller (John Ericsson Memorial - Wikipedia) and the Big Chair (Chair (sculpture) - Wikipedia).
Belleville, Ontario, has the inexplicable Glanmore House:
Yes, it’s a museum run by the city. Yes, it’s a rich man’s house from the 1880s. But the inexplicable part is that it’s a National Historic Site. Is ‘exceptional Second Empire architecture’ really that important?
In more prosaic obscurity, about thirty minutes away via the 401 is the Big Apple:
It’s your standard promotional tourist attraction with gift shop, kiddie attractions, etc, built around the local apple crop. It has a three-storey-tall model of an apple, placed to be easily visible from the freeway. We drove past it today, and discovered that it has a disturbing cartoon face painted on the apple…
A stone’s throw from my house is Cooch’s Bridge, site of the revolutionary war Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, where apparently 20 people were killed. Nevertheless, I’ve always found the name amusing. There is an old house by the bridge that serves as sort of a museum, which I still haven’t bothered to visit.
Where I live in London, we have the remains of the slipway from which the then biggest ship in the world was launched in the 1850s:
And not far away, in the middle of our city farm is a restored WW2 anti-aircraft gun post: