Film is, in many ways, an act of preservation — of people, of places, of eras in history. Turn on the TV and you’ll see actors who have grown old or long passed still in their youth, decades-old skylines that are barely recognizable today, and human fears, anxieties, jokes, and political fervor that now seem like they come from a completely different planet. Nothing and no one that exists inside the confines of a movie exists in the exact same way today, if it even still exists at all.
One of the fun things about watching movies is seeing the world as it used to be, with all the famous buildings and landmarks that used to be there. Because the times are always a-changin’, the world around us is changing, too, and plenty of places immortalized in film history are nowhere to be found today, no matter how famous they were in the past. These are places as old as a pharmacy counter where classic Hollywood actors and producers would mingle and gossip, or as modern as a far-reaching radio telescope buried in the jungles of the Caribbean. Whether through inevitable disrepair or a sudden act of god, these places have either been replaced by newer buildings or have disappeared altogether.
To celebrate some of these iconic lost places, we’ve picked ten of the most famous movie locations here, starting from the very beginnings of Hollywood history and ending as recently as the first Transformers movie, nearly 100 years of famous places now lost to time. Fortunately, all you have to do to revisit them is throw on your favorite movie.
10 Iconic Movie Locations That Don’t Exist Anymore
These famous places may be gone, but they’ll never be forgotten.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky