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This weekend some of New York’s most difficult spaces to visit will open their doors to the public. It’s the 5th annual OpenHouse New York, which is billed as America’s largest architectural and design event. More than 350 arts, cultural and private institutions will allow visitors, free of charge, the chance to experience some of New York’s hidden gems. We sent WNYC reporters, Kathleen Horan and Richard Hake to just a few and they bring us this “tag-team” report.

HORAN: Most of New York’s great icons will be included in the tours.

HAKE: Like Grand Central Terminal, The Chrysler Building and practically every museum in the five boroughs.

HORAN: But there are other places that you may have wondered about…like what’s behind the stately looking walls of an Upper East Side Mansion.

Just steps from Fifth Avenue, Richard found the House of The Redeemer, which sounds like a church, but it’s not.

HAKE: It’s the former home of Cornelius Vanderbuilt’s granddaughter and was given to the Episcopalian church for use as a retreat house for all faiths. When you enter…it takes your breath away.

COUNTS: She left everything, you know, the art, the furniture, these pieces of 17th century, 18th century chandeliers. She left everything.

HAKE: Judy Counts is the House Manager and says even wealthy Upper East Side neighbors express delight when they get to come in.

COUNTS: This is one of the few mansions in New York City that has not been touched. The interior of it now is the same as when the family lived here.

HAKE: Most dramatic is the cavernous, floor to ceiling wooden library brought over in pieces from a 15th Century castle in Italy.

COUNTS: I forgot to show you the little hidden door

HAKE: I guess every mansion--

COUNTS: Every mansion has its secret hidden door.

HAKE: The House of the Redeemer’s stunning architecture and hidden passageways are good examples of secret New York, but what about those places out in the open you still can’t get into. Kathleen enters the gates of The New York City Marble Cemetery in the East Village.

HORAN: It’s named for the marble that was used to build the walls and the underground vaults. In fact, much of place exists below, as burial chambers where over 5-thousand people, most from old Dutch families. It took one hundred and seventy two years for the Marble Cemetery to open its gates to the public. Staffer Kelly Frasier guides me to her favorite spot:

FRASIER: This is my favorite…this is the largest monument and there are two people here with the same name…Manglementhornquakenbash. How do I say? …one of the best names Quakenbash…friends with Preserved Fish…a popular man in death…did they sell fish?...Preserved is a Quaker name….the ones that sound unusual aren’t popular anymore…”His legend that he was plucked from the sea as a baby isn’t true”

HORAN: What are the rules for walking in a cemetery?

FRASIER: Its look but don’t touch…we welcome people to look with respect its not supported by the city…

HORAN: Not like Jim Morrison’s grave?

FRASIER: No graffiti is not encouraged.

HORAN: Farther downtown we pick up the tour in Tribeca where living and working in a loft is today’s modern mansion.

HAKE: Linda Pollack lives and works on Duane Street. She’s opening her home and her architecture firm’s offices as part of Open House New York. In the front busy staffers are looking at plans for a re-designed Queens Plaza which her firm, Marpillero Pollack Architects is doing. In the rear is the living space and one of the main reasons for combing the two….having all of her books in one place.

POLLACK: Because the books were a big part of keeping house and office together we used them to make the boundary, the threshold between house and office.

HAKE: The living space is dramatic. Pollack uses light and recycled items from the city’s infrastructure as part of the design.

Like this to me looks very familiar. It’s something I see on the sidewalk.

POLLACK: It’s subway grating. Yeah, it’s subway grating.

And that idea that you’re in a building, that you’re also in the city, in the landscape simultaneously, that’s not an inside or an outside. That you’re simultaneously living at these different scales. And we can feel the subway rumbling.

HAKE: The rumbling is from the passing E train whose tunnel is adjacent to the walls of the building. A subway ride away in Brooklyn, Kathleen steps into a long abandoned historic bath house re-appointed as a theatre.

HORAN: The Brooklyn Lyceum used to be known as Bathouse #7… The hulking building on 4th Avenue was dilapidated, covered in graffiti and strewn with garbage since it was refurbished over the last few years. Manager Eric Richmond shows off the 4000 square foot room. Built over the old swimming pool:

RICHMOND: You had the pool where people could use it and there were showers around the perimeter - to top that off there was the shower room that could hold 150 people.

HORAN: The building was completed in 1910 by Brooklyn architect Raymond F Almeral.

RICHMOND: we’ve converted it into a theatre and coffee shop …like an adult rec room? We are a cross between a Lincoln center and the 92nd street Y with more of a community feel to it.

HORAN: Back in Manhattan, Richard manages to hitch a ride with the Park’s Department through Riverside Park to a little New York icon that was around at the same time opens only a few times a year.

HAKE: This kind of reminds me of driving up a scenic coastal highway and we can see the lighthouse in the distance, like we were in Maine or something.

FINE: Yes, it’s a beautiful scenic waterfront drive.

HAKE: Jennifer Fine is with the Historic House Trust of New York. The organization oversees 22 historic homes in the five boros including The Little Red Lighthouse which is dwarfed by the looming pillars of the George Washington Bridge.

HAKE: Wow, that’s a big key.

FINE: Big key. It’s one of the original lighthouse keys, I think.

HAKE: Once inside, the traffic on the overheard GWB gets muffled. A steep climb to the top of the lighthouse gives one of the city’s impressive views.

HAKE: Even though it’s called the Little Red Lighthouse we are still kind of high up. Yes, we are very high up. It’s not so little and I will say children and adults all have the same reaction: It’s one of the coolest things to do in New York.

HAKE: And yet it was almost demolished. But Fine says thanks to the famous children’s classic The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge it was saved.

HAKE: The Little Red Lighthouse will be open to the public this weekend as part of Open House New York.

HORAN: The mission is to show off the city’s existing structures and environment that embody the past and provide a glimpse of the future.

HAKE: For WNYC, She’s Kathleen Horan.

HORAN: And he’s Richard Hake.

OpenHouse New York: a Complete Listing