A familiar landmark disappears twice: from the street and from everyone’s directions.

Demolition takes a building, and then a slower second loss follows in the way people talk. Directions still refer to it, newcomers do not know what is meant, and eventually the phrase drops out too. A place lives in local language as much as in brick, and that version takes longer to go. Watching it fade is a particular small grief that nobody quite has a name for.

If somewhere you knew has gone, say what stood there to somebody who never saw it. That is a modest form of keeping, and it costs nothing but a sentence.