14 Spectacular American Buildings We Can’t Believe Were Demolished

Mark Hopkins never got to see the mansion that he commissioned a pair of prominent architects to build for him and his wife atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill; the railroad magnate died before its completion in 1878. Sadly, we’ll never get to see it, either—the decadent Victorian palace burned down following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. But Mary, Mark’s widow, did get to experience the majestic home, living in it for several years before marrying the interior designer she hired to furnish it.

Any number of the spectacular Gilded Age mansions on Long Island could have inspired Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless novel The Great Gatsby. But the most likely candidate, in our humble opinion, is the fantastic, Gothic Beacon Towers—a Gold Coast landmark from 1917-1945. Like many of its neighbors, this house had pedigree; it was lived in by both Alva Belmont (an ex-Vanderbilt and widow of Oliver Belmont) and William Randolph Hearst.

The Chicago Federal Building was a place of mammoth proportions with a rotunda larger than that of Washington, DC’s Capital Building. It stood for sixty years, from its completion in 1905 to its quiet demolition in 1965. It was replaced with Mies van der Rohe’s modernist Kluczynski Federal Building—a far cry from the Beaux Arts extravagance of this lost treasure.

Topping everyone’s “what were they thinking?!” list is the 1963 demolition of New York’s beloved Pennsylvania Station, which was such a massive job that it took three years to complete. As workers began chipping away at the majestic Beaux-Arts facade, The New York Times famously reported that “until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance.” There was a light at the end of the tunnel, though: Outcry over the demolition helped pave the way for the creation of New York City’s Landmarks Law, which remains one of the strongest in the country.

San Francisco’s Cliff House restaurant still exists, but its latest incarnation is a stylistic departure from the 7-story chateau that occupied the site from 1896 until it burned to the ground in 1907. The landmark was rebuilt then remodeled a handful of times, but the opulence of its past lives on only in pictures.

We could have gotten lost for hours rummaging through the stacks of books piled high inside what many claim was the most beautiful library ever to be constructed in America. The old Public Library of Cincinnati was decorated with cast iron spiral staircases, checkerboard marble floors and five tiers of alcoves with the capacity to hold 300,000 books. Too good to be true? Perhaps it was; The building was demolished in 1955 to pave the way for a newer, more modern library building just down the street, and a parking garage now stands in its place.

The “Playground of the Southwest” has had its fair share of fancy hotels over the years, but the prettiest of the bunch might be this red-and-white striped Victorian confection that lasted for only a brief time after its construction in 1882. Designed by Nicholas Clayton—the architect of Galveston’s beloved Bishop’s Palace—the Beach Hotel was demolished after a mysterious fire less than two decades later.

We’ve managed to preserve a fair number of Louis Sullivan’s buildings in Chicago, but we did lose one pretty incredible one that the esteemed architect built with Dankmar Adler in 1891. A parking garage (why is it always a parking garage?) now stands in place of the Garrick Theater, which occupied the site until 1961. Photographer Richard Nickel photographed the space before it was completely demolished, so we can stare at the intricately-carved arches framing the stage and wonder how anything so stunning could have intentionally been destroyed.

It was the tallest building in the world for the year between 1908 and 1909, and the tallest ever to be intentionally demolished by its owner when it was taken down in 1968. But New York’s Singer Building was more than just a skyscraper towering over the Big Apple. It was also an architectural masterpiece, it’s lobby adorned with majestic columns capped with bronze medallions featuring the company logo, needles, thread and bobbins.

The suspended, double-helix masterpiece that rose inside the lobby of the former New York Life Insurance Building in Minneapolis was so much more than a staircase—it was an architectural work of art. Designed by the architectural firm of Babb, Cook & Willard, this might be the finest lobby we’ve ever laid eyes, past or present.

Mining tycoon Lewis Leonard Bradbury once lived in this whimsical, Queen-Anne style mansion in LA’s Bunker Hill neighborhood—the swankiest of places at the time of the home’s construction in 1887. The mansion later become the headquarters of Hal Roach’s Rolin Film Company, but by then the place had become so drafty that silent film star Harold Lloyd dubbed it “Pneumonia Hall.” The once-glorious estate was demolished in 1929.

Detroit’s former City Hall was threatened with demolition numerous times (the first only twenty years after it was built) before it finally lost the battle in 1961. But the building-a sumptuous mish-mash of the Italian Renaissance and French Second Empire styles-didn’t come down without a fight. The US Supreme Court even heard the case after the demolition plan caused public outcry, but it denied any attempts to stop it.

The 121-room Fifth Avenue mansion that came to be known as “Clark’s Folly” is said to have cost the historical equivalent of $177,755,000 to construct, which makes sense when you consider that it contained 31 baths, four art galleries, a pool, Turkish baths, a conservatory, a statuary room, an organ room and a private underground rail line. Architecturally, it might have been the most over-the-top of all the Gilded Age mansions to pop up on Fifth Avenue, with a four-story tower rising high above Central Park. Built for William A. Clark, a wealthy politician from Montana, the mansion was sold and torn down just 19 years after its completion.