Demolition Men

I found this, on the Ambassador Hotel, at Franklin Avenue. More here and here. The Ambassador was a swank hotel, famous for more than being the site of Kennedy's demise. With Emilio Estevez's upcoming film Bobby, about Bobby Kennedy's assassination at the hotel, you'd think the Ambassador would become a tourist draw (albeit a macabre one). No. The hotel met its own demise a few years back. The above links tell the story of the Ambassador's glory days, then its neglect and destruction.

On the other side of the Pacific Rim, Tokyo officials plan to cleave in two the hip Shimokitazawa neigborhood with an 81-foot-wide thoroughfare. The article says:

The road has set off a rare battle for preservation in a country where big construction projects have long been welcomed as progress and used to grease the wheels of politics. The fight pits boutique and bar owners, among them the first bearers of hippie culture to the neighborhood three decades ago, against city hall and older residents who resent the relative newcomers.
In cities from New York to Bucharest, the practice of plowing large roads through urban communities has been widely discredited. But Tokyo is only just beginning to consider the social costs, after decades of covering its medieval moats and rivers with highways, and replacing tile-roofed dwellings with featureless concrete buildings.

"Until now, nobody cared if we destroyed the culture and environment of Tokyo," said Mikiko Ishikawa, a professor at Keio University here who specializes in urban planning. "People are gradually coming to understand that these things matter, too."
For many Tokyoites, the charm of Shimokitazawa lay in the fact that it had escaped such redevelopment. A sleepy residential community on the city's outskirts, it escaped American wartime bombings.

Ironic, no?

The article also mentions the conflict between older, longtime residents who welcome the development (one reason, the thoroughfare would be an earthquake-evacuation route) and resent the hipper newcomers protesting the project.

Preservation begins at home. The National Trust for Historic Preservation should be your first stop.