I've always been interested in the history and culture of spaces, especially in cities. There's something about a visit... the chance to occupy a space where something significant occurred, that is much more visceral and interesting than simply reading about it. Here's some places that are gone....

New York Times via Archinect & Space and Culture:

Here are a baker's dozen of [lost architectural treasures] - all in Manhattan, which has suffered the greatest loss of architectural treasures - that are forever etched in the city's collective memory. All have disappeared since the demise of Penn Station, and most were subjects of controversy at the time of their destruction. They are just a sample of what has vanished.

Taken together, these lost buildings and rooms form a kind of ghost city, an island of memory that hovers above the real, evolving Manhattan. It is a shadow New York that once was and might have continued to be, had the economic and political forces that shape the city been different. It is also the only New York that is a perfect New York, for as Marcel Proust wrote in "Remembrance of Things Past," "the true paradises are the paradises we have lost..."