Daniel Avila gets to see a side of New York most New Yorkers don’t know is there — places the city owns that are off limits to the public. As a photographer for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, he has shot everything from the underground plumbing beneath the High Bridge in Upper Manhattan — part of the city’s 170-year-old aqueduct — to North Brother Island, where Typhoid Mary was quarantined for more than 20 years until her death in 1938.

An account of his most recent works is featured on City Room.