10457 Best Sights in USA

There are cabins available through the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association near Eagle, Vail, Leadville, and Breckenridge.

A National Historic District, Golden's 12th Street has a row of handsome 1860s brick buildings.

Some wags have pointed out that this building, with its diamond-shaped top, looks like a giant pencil sharpener. Built in 1984 as the Smurfit-Stone Building and later known as the Crain Communications Building, it has a slanted top that carves through the top 10 of its floors. In the plaza is Yaacov Agam's Communication X9, a painted, folded aluminum sculpture that was restored (to some controversy) and reinstalled in 2008. You'll see different patterns in the sculpture depending on your vantage point.

Animals you know and love and some you never knew existed—like the zebu, a cow with a camel-like hump—are on display at this farm across the street from the 1661 Inn. Lemurs leap around their own enclosure, and llamas, kangaroos, a yak, and even fainting goats (whose legs stiffen when they get excited, causing them to keel over) will all gladly munch pellets out of your hand. Vegetables and herbs from the garden inevitably find a place on plates served to guests at the inn.

A community-based project dedicated in 2005, these 163 tiled steps have beautiful designs showing fish, shells, animals, starry skies, and other scenes. The steps are in a residential neighborhood, so enjoy the steps and the city views from the top quietly.

Marblehead's 18th-century high society is exemplified in this mansion run by the Marblehead Museum. Colonel Lee was the wealthiest merchant and ship owner in Massachusetts in 1768, and although few original furnishings remain, the unique hand-painted wallpaper and fine collection of traditional North Shore furniture provide clues to the life of an American gentleman. Across the street at the main museum (open year-round), the J.O.J. Frost Gallery & Carolyn Lynch Education Center pays tribute to the town's talented 19th-century native son.

This well-preserved town house and courtyard provide rare public access beyond the storefronts to the interior of the exclusive Pontalba Buildings. The rooms are furnished in the style of the mid-19th century, when the buildings were designed as upscale residences and retail spaces. Notice the ornate ironwork on the balconies of the apartments; the original owner, Baroness Micaela Pontalba, popularized cast (or molded) iron with these buildings, and it eventually replaced much of the old handwrought ironwork in the French Quarter. The initials for her families, A and P (Almonester and Pontalba), are worked into the design. A gift shop and bookstore run by the Friends of the Cabildo is downstairs. The Friends also offer informative two-hour walking tours of the French Quarter ($22) from this location Tuesday through Sunday at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm that include admission to the house.

The stately sandstone Avery House was built in 1879 by Franklin Avery, who set the tone for Old Town's broad streets when he surveyed the city in 1873. You can tour the inside on weekends. The Avery House is just one of 36 sites on the Poudre Landmark Foundation's historic walking-tour map, which includes several self-guided options.

This 40-story postmodern office building, resembling a supersized château, was designed by John Burgee and Philip Johnson in the mid-1980s. The grand, gold-leaf vaulted lobby is spectacular.

A stop by the 1932 & 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Museum is a fitting way to begin your tour of Lake Placid. Displays here, including sports outfits and gear, explain the history and legacy of the Olympic Games at Lake Placid.

In the early 1970s, the tallest building in New England became notorious as the monolith that rained glass from time to time. Windows were improperly seated in the sills of the blue rhomboid tower, designed by I. M. Pei. Once the building's 13 acres of glass were replaced and the central core stiffened, the problem was corrected. Bostonians originally feared the Hancock's stark modernism would overwhelm nearby Trinity Church, but its shimmering sides reflect the older structure's image, actually enlarging its presence. Renamed from the John Hancock Tower to 200 Clarendon in 2015, the building is mostly offices and remains off-limits to the public.

This structure, designed in 1904 by Daniel Burnham, who later moved his office here, was once known as the Railway Exchange Building and the Santa Fe Building, for a "Santa Fe" sign on its roof that has since been removed. The Chicago Architecture Foundation uses the building's atrium for rotating exhibits about the changing landscape of Chicago and other cities. The organization also offers a variety of tours via foot, bus, and boat.

Going strong since 1951 and headquartered in a 1936 adobe abode built by pulp western author and screenwriter Tom Hopkins, this nonprofit organization and gallery hosts exhibitions by local painters, sculptors, and jewelry makers who are inspired by the desert landscape. If you find yourself inspired, sign up for one of the many youth and adult art workshops. There's a small gift shop. 

The first of three towers intended for the site, this pale-pink edifice is the work of Kohn Pedersen Fox, who also designed 333 West Wacker Drive, a few blocks away. The 1990 building's most distinctive feature is its Gothic crown, brightly lit at night. During migration season so many birds crashed into the illuminated tower that management was forced to tone down the lighting. An inviting atrium has palm trees and a splashy, romantic fountain.

This green-glazed beauty doesn't follow the rules. Its riverside facade echoes the curve of the Chicago River just in front of it, while the other side is all business, conforming neatly to the straight lines of the street grid. The 1983 Kohn Pedersen Fox design, roughly contemporary to the James R. Thompson Center, enjoyed a much more positive public reception. It also had a small but important role in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the location of Ferris's dad's office.

Students and counterculturists favor the ½-mile strip of 4th Avenue between University Boulevard and 8th Street, where vintage-clothing stores rub shoulders with eclectic gift shops and eateries. After dark, 4th Avenue bars pulse with live and recorded music.

Up Kokomo Road in Haiku you'll find a large puu (volcanic cinder cone) capped with a grove of columnar pines and the 4th Marine Division Memorial Park. During World War II, American GIs trained here for battles on Iwo Jima and Saipan. Locals nicknamed the cinder cone "Giggle Hill" because it was a popular hangout for Maui women and their favorite servicemen. The park includes an impressive playground, picnic tables, and lots of wide-open space.

Originally the Hotel Cecil, this market became Cramer's 5&10, an old-fashioned variety store operated by a pair of proprietors who themselves became historic treasures. The building's enterprising current owner created an antiques mart, but fully restored the building's exterior and retained its well-worn wood flooring, candy jars, and display counters. You could spend a weekend here!

Many Bushwick galleries showcase edgy and experimental work, but visiting this converted warehouse is an easy way to see a lot of art in one place. The BogArt houses a few galleries, including standouts M. David & Go and the Amos Eno Gallery, plus large loft studios, often with open studio viewing sessions. Gallery hours vary, but the best time to visit is on Friday and weekends, when most places are open.

Along the 2,400-mile stretch of America's first highway, the section that passes through Amarillo is still bustling with more than 100 home-owned businesses in the city's first and only historic district. Take home a piece of history from a selection of 25 antiques stores, shop until you drop at 22 specialty boutiques, choose from 15 locally owned restaurants, browse original art in the galleries, or party through the night at nearly a dozen bars and clubs. Wherever you go, your path will be illuminated by vintage lighting and you'll feel nostalgia oozing from tree-lined cobblestone sidewalks.

At 48 stories, this modern high-rise is no giant, but it more than makes its mark on South Wacker Drive with a bold elliptical shape, a glass-faced street-level lobby rising 36 feet, and a pedestrian-friendly plaza. It displays a noticeable tweaking of the unrelieved curtain wall that makes many city streets forbidding canyons. Designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the tower was originally known as the Hyatt Center and was completed in 2004.

Rising real-estate prices inspired the construction of New York City's narrowest house—just 9½ feet wide and 32 feet deep—in 1873. Built on a lot that was originally a carriage entrance of the Isaacs-Hendricks House next door, this sliver of a building has illustrious past residents including actor John Barrymore and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

These 26-story twin apartment towers overlooking Lake Michigan were an early and eloquent realization of Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" credo, expressed in high-rise form. I-beams running up the facade underscore their verticality; inside, mechanical systems are housed in the center so as to leave the rest of each floor free and open to the spectacular views. Completed in 1951, the buildings, called “flat-chested architecture" by Frank Lloyd Wright, are a prominent example of the International Style, which played a key role in transforming the look of American cities.

This nonprofit project of the September 11th Families' Association opened in 2006 with the intent of putting the events of that day into context—at the time, there was little to see beyond a big construction site. Its galleries include displays about the history and construction of Lower Manhattan; the events of September 11, 2001; the response and recovery efforts after the attacks; and first-person histories. A Tribute visit tends to feel more intimate, and is a good alternative or complement to the broader mission of the separate National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Guided walking tours are often led by survivors or first responders and cover the gallery and the memorial (not the National 9/11 Memorial Museum on the WTC site).

The original name of this mountain, Sentinel Peak, west of Downtown, came from its function as a lookout point for the Spanish, though the Pima village and cultivated fields that once lay at the base of the peak are long gone. In 1915 fans of the University of Arizona football team whitewashed a large "A" on its side to celebrate a victory, and the tradition has been kept up ever since—the permanent "A" is now red, white, and blue. During the day, the peak's a great place to get an overview of the town's layout; at night the city lights below form a dazzling carpet, but the teenage hangout scene may make some uncomfortable.

Works by one of Florida's foremost landscape artists and leader of The Highwaymen artist group, Albert Ernest Backus (1906–90), are on display at this museum. It also mounts changing exhibits and offers exceptional buys on paintings, pottery, and jewelry by local artists.

The estate includes the Widow Jane Mine, cement kilns, and parts of the D&H Canal. A museum concentrates on the local cement industry and showcases antique sleighs and carriages. It's about 3 miles east of High Falls.