On a stroll through Lower Manhattan a few years ago, Fred and Tris Essenwein innocently wandered into the Woolworth Building. But, like thousands of others before them drawn to the 55-story neo-Gothic landmark, they were abruptly escorted out by uniformed guards.  ”We made it about three feet,” said Mr. Essenwein, 62, of Colonia, N.J.  Yesterday, the Essenweins once again breezed past the sign outside warning tourists away, only this time with little resistance from building security. (One guard made them wait outside until their tour began.)  The couple was taking part in Open House New York Weekend, an annual event that gives people a view of interior landmarks, notable residences and other architectural treasures around the city that are rarely open to the public. Now in their fifth year, the tours, which continue today, were expected to draw 100,000 visitors this weekend.

For the Essenweins and a cousin Kris Arntsen, of Waterville, Maine, who came along, it was a chance to see a place they had long admired from outside.

”I’m familiar with Cass Gilbert,” Mr. Essenwein said of the famed architect who designed the Woolworth Building. ”He’s designed some flamboyant, spectacular buildings. So this place has always been very teasing. But apparently, the building’s management is not very tourist-friendly.”

The Woolworth Building tours came courtesy of the Control Group, a technology consulting firm that occupies part of the 21st floor. Scott Anderson, a founding partner of the company, gave two groups of a few dozen people each a tour of the ornate lobby, then escorted them up to his offices. There they were treated to bagels, doughnuts and juice and allowed to roam freely among the Creamsicle-colored décor.

But the lobby was the big attraction. The Essenweins peered with joy at the barrel-vaulted ceilings, the Byzantine-style mosaics encrusted with colored glass, and, perched along the walls, the humorous plaster grotesques of Mr. Gilbert, the architect, cradling a model of the building, and F.W. Woolworth, the retail giant, counting his nickels and dimes.

Elsewhere in the city, inquisitive crowds got rare peeks inside a Metropolitan Transportation Authority substation in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. They learned about affinage, the art of aging cheese to pungent perfection, and toured underground cheese caves at Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village. And they looked out over Grand Army Plaza from atop the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Brooklyn.

”The point of the event is really to excite people and interest people about New York’s amazing architectural heritage and its future,” Scott Lauer, an architect and executive director of Open House New York, a nonprofit group that promotes city architecture and design. (Information about today’s tours is at www.openhousenewyork.org.)

More than that, the event also feeds a fundamental, and perfectly natural, desire among New Yorkers to get past the doorman and see how other people live.

For the third year in a row, one of the most popular attractions was the Greenwich Village duplex of Adam Kushner, an architect. Mr. Kushner designed the unusual 1,400-square-foot space by combining two studios and adding an upper-level mezzanine. With its wild mix of materials, including brick, steel, smooth-wood paneling and acrylic glass, the place seems part intimate abode, part installation art. Perhaps its most notable feature is a second-level bathtub whose bottom is see-through.

”I suppose if you have the inclination to look up, you’re going to see someone’s bottom,” Mr. Kushner said, as hundreds of people padded through his home throughout the day.

By 3 p.m., people were still lined up to the end of the block waiting to get in. ”Are you kidding me?” Mr. Kushner said.

”It’s amazing,” said Carolyn Grossman, 24, of Manhattan, as she toured the upper floor. ”I’m so impressed.”

Ms. Grossman, who works for the City Planning Department, had put Mr. Kushner’s residence on her list of places to visit after reading about it in New York magazine.

For Mr. Kushner, inviting people into his home is akin to an artist displaying his work.

”This is my gallery, and on some level, it’s very personal,” he said. ”A lot of stuff people aren’t going to get.”

At the Metropolitan Transportation Authority station in Crown Heights, the main attraction was two enormous rotary converters that were used to power the trolleys and then the subways from 1896 until 1999.

Fred Meyers, 79, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., said that as a child, he sometimes passed the substation and often wondered what was behind the steel doors.

”You could hear the humming,” he said. ”For me, this is fulfillment. This is like looking behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz.”

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