The wedding chapel at the original Aladdin where Elvis Presley married Priscilla? Gone. The Desert Inn suite where the reclusive Howard Hughes lived for years? Gone.
As a result, Vegas can’t celebrate its centennial the way most cities would-that is, by reliving historical moments at the carefully curated scenes of their occurrence. In the last 15 years alone, almost five centuries’ worth of buildings-and it-could-only-happen-here history-have been bulldozed or imploded (in several cases, on national TV). If ever a city had a peculiar relationship with its past, it’s Las Vegas.
