10 of the coolest places open to the public for this year’s Open House New York

Open House New York Weekend is back Oct. 18 – 20, providing free or cheap, one-of-a-kind tours of spaces that are normally closed off to the public, all around the city.

With hundreds of sites to choose from, navigating the options can be a bit overwhelming. So we’ve sifted through the offerings and pulled out 10 of the coolest places you’ll have access to.

There are plenty of new options this year, along with returning stalwarts like the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Brooklyn Seltzer Museum, and Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene.

Many of the offerings are open access, meaning no reservation is required to visit. But many of the most popular sites have limited access, so participants will need $6 for first-come, first-served reservations, which open up to the public at 11 a.m. on Oct. 8.

Here are 10 of the spots you might want to see.

WELCOME Sign

Many New Yorkers can recall the bright red “WATCHTOWER” sign, which stood sentinel above the Jehovah’s Witness complex in Brooklyn Heights for decades. After a regulatory tussle over installing a new one, a new sign reading “WELCOME” was first lit in November 2019, 50 years after the original was illuminated. For this special tour, visitors will be allowed onto the building rooftop for a close-up look at the new sign. You can learn more here.

Ravenswood Generating Station

New to the lineup this year is New York City’s largest power plant, which sometimes provides more than a fifth of the city’s electricity. A new “Renewable Ravenswood” plan aims to convert most of the infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables — all of which you’ll learn about while seeing the space on this hard-hat tour. Ticketholders must submit a copy of their ID for a background check if they get tickets, which will be available here.

Colossal Media Paint Shop

Colossal Media is the company behind many of New York’s enormous, stories-tall outdoor advertising murals, including a “brat wall” for pop star Charli XCX. In this tour, visitors can go behind the scenes at the studio’s paint shop in East Williamsburg, the first stop on the road to many of Colossal’s recognizable murals. You can learn more here.

NYC Municipal Archives

Librarians, registrars and archive nerds take heed: This is a rare opportunity to see inside the off-limits areas of the city’s Department of Records and Information Services. The Sunset Park facility opened in 2021, and visitors will see a handful of selected archival materials, including photos, historical records, gifts and ephemera from different mayoralties. You can learn more here.

The New York Sign Museum

Ever wonder what happens to that great old storefront sign that disappeared from your neighborhood after the business closed? There’s a chance it ended up at the New York Sign Museum, which has been collecting signs from places like Queen restaurant in Brooklyn Heights and the Essex Card Shop on the Lower East Side since 2013. Housed in the fabrication workshop of sister business Noble Signs, the normally appointment-only museum is opening to the public for OHNY Weekend. No reservations are required, but the space is limited to 15 people at a time and lines are expected. You can learn more here.

Barone Steel Fabricators

Visitors need to be 18 or older at this active Sunset Park industrial site where large-scale steel fabrication is performed. The guided tour will take participants through every step from design and drawing to the finished steel product. Safety glasses will be provided. Add a trip to the nearby Brooklyn Army Terminal and other OHNY Weekend spots to round out the visit.

You can learn more here.

The Refinery at Domino Penthouse

If you’ve been over the Williamsburg Bridge, you’ve seen the massive glass dome emerging from the top of the renovated Domino Sugar Factory. This tour, guest-curated by the Structural Engineers Association of New York, looks deeply at how this old-meets-new structure was made possible, all within a stunning jewel box of floor-to-ceiling views overlooking the city.

You can learn more here.

Nitehawk Prospect Park Rooftop

When else will you have the chance to stand on top of a movie theater and look out at Prospect Park? The $15 million renovation of the Nitehawk Prospect Park, which was completed in 2018, now includes solar panels on the rooftop, where this tour ends after exploring some of the building’s back-of-house spaces. You can learn more here.

144 Vanderbilt Avenue

Hard-hat tours are a staple of any OHNY weekend — years ago, visitors could visit the construction site of 1 World Trade Center and sign their names on a column of the building. One of this year’s hard hat tours enters the construction site of 144 Vanderbilt, an eight-story condo building being developed on the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill border. The site includes sheltered outdoor corridors, terraces and breezeways, as well as window views all the way to the East River. Visitors must be 18 or older. You can enter the lottery here.

62 Reade Street

Another hard-hat tour is of 62 Reade Street, a current renovation project that’s combining two landmarked Tribeca buildings into six residences, including a penthouse with five terraces. If you don’t have eight figures to spare on buying such a home, this is your chance to get a private tour with the founder and interior projector director of ODA, the lauded firm behind the project. Visitors must be 18 or older. You can learn more here.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the pricing for some events. While many events are free, some are $6 and reservations are available online one a first-come, first served basis.