Visitors to Battery Park in Manhattan will find memorials to fallen soldiers, sunken sailors and 400 passengers who perished when a Staten Island ferry was attacked by a giant octopus.

This last event, however convincing (thanks to 250-pound cast-bronze sculpture and plaque), is entirely fictional, part of surprisingly elaborate hoax. That would be hard to guess at a glance, though, given the thought and craft that went into this fake memorial and the other materials that were designed to bolster its credibility.

Artist Joseph Reginella invented the scenario, crafting a website, a mock documentary, news articles and fliers to complete the deception. The monument even directs people to the Ferry Disaster Memorial museum. It also weaves in real-world facts, like the name of the ship.

He had the idea while taking the ferry himself. When his won asked whether there were dangerous creatures waiting below, he invented the story, then spent months elaborating on the fabrication.

To keep the city from taking it away, he has moved the memorial from place to place. To add credibility, he made the day of the event the same as the assassination of President Kennedy, something that would plausibly overshadow such a massive historic disaster.

It truly is a hulk of a thing to make into a live/work space, but there is an industrial loft-like quality that renders this decommissioned Icelandic car carrier appealingly open yet cozy at the same time.

Its owners, occupants and redesigers Olle Lundberg and Mary Breuer (architects and fabricators by trade of ) looked into everything from tugboats to ships before finding this offbeat beauty and deciding to call it home.

It ‘only’ cost a few hundred thousand to buy, but multiple times that to make fully habitable as an abode and office. Among other expenses, they had to hire the crew to take it on a seven-week trip from Iceland, through the Panama Canal to dock in Mission Bay.

Their secondary residence, much like their primary, is weird and wonderful as well – an oddly-shaped cabin that combines a small original rural structure with their own custom additions and populated with leftover furniture commissioned but then not purchased by clients.

The pool, for instance, is a massive wooden water tank rescued from a farm property, patched up with wood from a local winery, then added to the exterior and filled with liquid (which initially smelt of red wine when swimming). Images via New York Times photographer Peter DaSilva.