All Gone But Remembered

A good and needed piece at The Conversation on demolished buildings. The amount I know about the buildings mentioned varies; I’m by far the most familiar with the old Waldorf Astoria, even though it was torn down before my mother was born. My research into the structure of early tall buildings led me to that hotel and my research on the Empire State Building (which occupies the demolished W-A’s site) led me to its demolition.

The best part of the short descriptions that make up the article is that they mostly focus on what the buildings meant to the community. Even a public and famous building like the Waldorf Astoria is memorable for people’s impressions: glamor is a second-hand trait that accrues when people feel that something is glamorous. I’ve talked about this before (here, for example) but it bears repeating: the point of preserving buildings is to preserve them for people, to save their meaning to the people around them and to save them in use if possible. Otherwise, we might as well just save pictures.