🔍 To kick off our series of #LostLandmarks, we would be remiss if we didn't start with the granddaddy of all demolished landmarks. Yes, it's the one, the only, that started it all: Pennsylvania Station. Popular myth traces the birth of the NYC preservation movement, and the creation of Landmarks Law, to the loss of Penn Station. (Preservation forces *had* existed in NY before Penn Station's demo, so take this interpretation with a grain of salt. That's a tale for another day.)

#OnThisDay, the Morosco Theatre opened in 1917 in Times Square in a moment where it seemed as if the theater bubble would never burst. But the Depression Era was not kind to Broadway: many theaters near the Morosco were converted to movie houses, turned to burlesque, or closed. As stars who had made a name for themselves onstage left New York for Hollywood’s silver screen, institutions like the Morosco had less and less leverage to justify their existence in the face of developers’ forceful attempts to redevelop the Times Square area.