Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Giant objects, odd monuments and things built for no clear reason.
Rockport, MA
Mechanical engineer Elis Stenman built a summer house using layers of newspaper, glue and varnish instead of conventional wall material. He then continued the experiment by constructing newspaper furniture, including a desk, chairs and a piano covering. The seasonal attraction still operates on an old-fashioned honor system.
Deerfield, MA
A roadside geology shop surrounds visitors with dinosaur replicas, fossils, minerals and a backyard 'Dinosaur Forest' that even includes a UFO-and-alien scene. It is part educational rock shop and part old-school roadside attraction.
Boston, MA
A large carved wooden cod hangs inside the Massachusetts State House as a symbol of the fishing industry's importance to the Commonwealth. The object has been stolen as a prank more than once, making it one of America's stranger pieces of official government decor.
Cohasset, MA
Several locations around Cohasset stood in for the fictional New England town in the 1987 supernatural comedy 'The Witches of Eastwick.' The compact town center makes it possible to connect real streets and buildings with the film's witchy setting.
Eastham, MA
Three small nineteenth-century lighthouse towers stand together in the woods after being retired and moved inland. Their original arrangement along the coast supposedly resembled three women in white dresses with black hats, earning them the nickname 'Three Sisters.'
Goshen, MA
A private art environment has grown into acres of mosaics, stones, metal figures, towers, dragons, glass and gardens merging into the surrounding woodland. The handmade sanctuary is still evolving and is open to paying visitors during posted hours.
Pittsfield, MA
A life-size stegosaurus named Wally stands outside the Berkshire Museum. The dinosaur has become a local landmark and a preview of the museum's natural-history collections, appearing unexpectedly along a downtown streetscape rather than in a prehistoric park.
Lowell, MA
Each holiday season, a huge conical framework of lights transforms the top of a mill smokestack into an enormous elevated Christmas tree. The industrial chimney becomes a surreal seasonal landmark visible across Lowell, generally appearing from late fall into winter.
Haverhill, MA
A Victorian stone castle rises above Kenoza Lake inside Winnekenni Park. Built in the 1870s as a private summer retreat, it now serves as an event and community space while the surrounding trails remain public. Check ahead if seeing the interior matters.
Boston, MA
The Museum of Science operates an enormous Van de Graaff generator capable of producing spectacular indoor lightning. Built around machinery created by Robert Van de Graaff, the towering apparatus is used in live electricity demonstrations rather than sitting silently behind glass.
Quincy, MA
A polished granite ball six feet in diameter and weighing about 9.5 tons sits near Quincy City Hall. The 1925 monument was once promoted by Ripley's Believe It or Not as the 'most nearly perfect sphere in the world,' an absurdly precise claim for an enormous stone ball left outdoors for a century.
Salem, MA
An entire late-Qing-dynasty merchant family's house was dismantled in China, shipped to Massachusetts and reconstructed inside the Peabody Essex Museum complex. The furnished house preserves generations of domestic architecture in an extraordinary transplanted setting.
