Randall Mason, co-author of North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, on this now-abandoned, once-feared part of Gotham’s archipelago, which served for decades as (often forced) quarantine for the ill during various epidemics.

Charles Affron, co-author of Grand Opera: The Story of the Met, on the world famous opera company.

Edith Gonzalez, a historical archaeologist, on Wyckoff House, the oldest structure in NYC, a Dutch-era farmhouse situated in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Canarsie.

Gail Fenske, author of The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York, on the architectural landmark in Tribeca.

Fred Goodman, former Rolling Stone editor and the author of The Secret City: Woodlawn Cemetery and the Buried History of New York, on the Bronx graveyard next to Van Cortlandt Park.

Kurt Schlichting, author of Waterfront Manhattan: From Henry Hudson to the High Line, on the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook.

Michael Hattem, co-founder of the Junto and historian of colonial NYC, on the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, where the remains of nearly 11,000 P.O.W.'s in the American Revolution are buried, in Fort Greene.

Pamela Hanlon, independent historian and the author of A Worldly Affair: New York, the United Nations, and the Story Behind Their Unlikely Bond, on the international body's headquarters in Turtle Bay.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Graduate Center historian and the definitive biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt, on her former home, now a CUNY-affiliated think tank in the Upper East Side.

R. Scott Hanson, NYC field researcher for Harvard’s Pluralism Project and the author of City of Gods: Religious Freedom, Immigration, and Pluralism in Flushing, Queens, on the neighborhood's famous Quaker meetinghouse.