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Red Hook Grain Terminal.
(Photo: Elan Wonder ) |
Red Hook Grain Terminal: For years, abandoned-building explorers have longed to gaze from the rooftop of this massive former grain-storage facility, which was deactivated in 1965. Alas, in 1997 the president of the Gowanus Industrial Park bought the place and has been paying for trespasser patrols ever since.
Unionport Yard: A brave few graffiti artists have tried sneaking
into this Van Nest subway yard, tagging one of the trains, and photographing their work before the train is put back on the tracks. But, as was the case for the artist HEZE, who was arrested here in June, it usually doesn’t end well.
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Hart Island.
(Photo: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty ) |
Hart Island: This 101-acre Bronx island has hosted the military and a women’s insane asylum. Now it’s a potter’s field full of nearly 1 million bodies, where even families of the buried don’t have full access. Unauthorized visitors can face jail time.
The Top of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: At 693 feet�reached only after an ascent of a rickety elevator and a series of ladders and stairs�this pinnacle would make a hell of an Instagram. Though climbers’ lore holds that the last unauthorized person to get up there was in the ’80s.
The Waldorf-Astoria Subway, a.k.a. Track 61: Subterranean party throwers yearning to make like Warhol�who hosted the famed Underground Party on this platform below the Waldorf in 1965�will have no such luck, considering it’s been closed to the public since it was built in 1929.
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City Water Tunnel No. 3.
(Photo: Richard Levine/Alamy) |
City Water Tunnel No. 3: This 60-mile pipeline has been restricted to official employees since construction began in 1970, though occasional openings for work have created entries for explorers�including the one that killed 12-year-old Don-re Carroll, who fell 500 feet into the tunnel in 1991.
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North Brother Island.
(Photo: Will Ellis ) |
North Brother Island: Adventurous boaters can try pulling up to the shores of this crumbling, overgrown, 20-acre former home to the quarantine hospital where Typhoid Mary died in 1938�though the hypervigilant security will likely arrest you.