Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Small, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
Bronx, NY
Edgar Allan Poe lived in this small Fordham cottage from 1846 until shortly before his death, and his wife Virginia died here in 1847. The preserved house is now a museum containing exhibits and period furnishings connected to Poe's final years, with regular weekend hours and additional private tours by arrangement.
Gilboa, NY
Gilboa became famous after quarrying exposed fossilized tree stumps from one of the oldest known forests on Earth, dating back roughly 380 million years. The local museum and outdoor fossil displays preserve examples from the site, with regular public hours concentrated on summer and early-fall weekends.
Lake George, NY
This old-fashioned horror wax museum fills a Canada Street building with moving monsters, gruesome tableaux and classic horror characters. It operates seasonally in Lake George, so current opening dates should be checked before treating it as a guaranteed walk-in stop.
Le Roy, NY
Jell-O was developed in Le Roy in 1897, and this museum preserves advertising, packaging, recipes and artifacts from the dessert's unusually successful history. The gallery operates seasonally from spring until shortly before Christmas, so check its current schedule before routing here.
Lily Dale, NY
Lily Dale has operated as a Spiritualist community since the nineteenth century, and its museum occupies a former schoolhouse filled with photographs, documents and artifacts from generations of mediums and séances. Access is tied to the Lily Dale grounds and its seasonal programming, with a gate fee required during the summer season.
New York, NY
Mmuseumm is a tiny cabinet-of-curiosities museum built inside a former freight elevator in a Tribeca alley. Its displays focus on overlooked everyday objects and contemporary artifacts, and the interior has very limited seasonal hours even though the exhibits can often be viewed through the windows from the alley.
Ballston Spa, NY
The National Bottle Museum treats bottle making as America's first major industry and fills its galleries with historic bottles, molds, tools and glassmaking equipment. It is open year-round on posted Wednesday-through-Saturday hours and also maintains a research collection devoted to historic glass.
Eden, NY
The Original American Kazoo Company began producing metal kazoos here in 1916, and the surviving factory now includes a small museum packed with historic kazoos and production equipment. Visitors can see how the instruments are made and, on operating days, make a kazoo of their own.
Liverpool, NY
Built beside Onondaga Lake in 1933, this small museum preserves the story of the salt industry that gave nearby Syracuse its nickname, the Salt City. Exhibits explain brine wells, boiling blocks and salt production, with free public hours running seasonally from May into October.
Brooklyn, NY
This Brooklyn museum displays a large educational collection of real human skeletal material, including unusual pathologies, traumatic injuries and what it describes as the world's largest public collection of human spines. It operates as a ticketed museum inside the McKibbin Lofts during posted Wednesday-through-Sunday hours.
Brooklyn, NY
The City Reliquary is a tiny community museum devoted to ordinary and eccentric pieces of New York life, from subway tokens and fragments of landmarks to collections assembled by neighborhood residents. It began as a window display and now occupies a small Williamsburg storefront with limited weekend public hours.
