For decades, curious New Yorkers were able to climb the stairs to the second floor of the Department of Sanitation garage on East 99th Street to investigate the rumors of a trash museum run by a sanitation worker. Visitors might have expected something modest—maybe a few old artifacts, a room with some quirky antiques. Instead, they walked into what looked like New York City's collective unconscious.
Lamps, antique tables, old cameras, a Star of David made from Ground Zero steel—over Nelson Molina's 34 years as a sanitation worker, he pulled 55,000 objects before they could hit the compactor. Vintage toys, paintings, mannequins, clocks, bicycles, and objects too strange to categorize filled nearly every inch of space. Molina repaired everything himself, with tools he also found in the garbage. He called it a gallery, and himself an accidental curator—a role he says began in 2009, when he was unexpectedly asked to guide visitors through the collection. Eventually, the space became known as the Treasures in the Trash Museum, one of New York's most beloved under-the-radar attractions: a museum assembled not through acquisitions or donations, but through garbage truck routes.
In 2020, however, the gallery closed because of the pandemic—and, due to structural concerns with the space that houses it, it hasn't reopened. Today, the collection remains inside the garage where Molina built it piece by piece, but the public hasn't been allowed to see it for the past six years. With no timeline for relocation, no official landmark or cultural designation to protect it, and the building that shelters it slowly deteriorating around it, the collection that spent a decade drawing visitors from across the country may not survive at all.