< The Impermanence Of Architecture
On the corner of the house where I grew up, now where my mother resides alone, was an electric cinema house complete with an elaborate spire that jutted out over the road.
It never functioned when I was a kid, and was boarded up for a long time like most defunct cinemas were back then. The area I lived in was originally a well-todo Victorian suburb that throughout much of the 1900s saw a decline in its former prominence, allowing more disadvantaged families such as my own to live there.
It's now being rapidly gentrified, to the point that the old cinema house was converted into a block of flats, and a few supermarkets sprang up next to it. All the decrepid allure of the structure is gone, and although they kept the spire (due to some local outrage) it looks nothing like it used to, and is more of an oddity than a historical marker.