5. The City Reliquary is a quirky museum full of New York artifacts

City Reliquary storefront

One of the coolest museums in New York City, the City Reliquary started in 2002 as makeshift museum in the window of Dave Herman’s Williamsburg apartment. Thanks to donations from patrons, it moved into its current home on Metropolitan Avenue in 2006 and has remained a not-for-profit community museum ever since.

The small space is filled chock-a-block with New York ephemera and artifacts, including old subway tokens (remember those?), Statue of Liberty postcards, fragments of terracotta from landmark buildings, and antique seltzer bottles. It’s well worth a visit for its permanent collection, but also hosts rotating exhibits, which in the past have covered everything from New York’s old school donut shops to the city’s most innovative instrument makers.