I read today that, over the weekend, the house that some believe to be the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was torn down. The property, located on Long Island’s Gold Coast, will be subdivided and replaced by five houses, each with a ten million dollar price tag. The 25-room mansion, sitting on thirteen acres of land, belonged to a Gilded Age of the roaring twenties, a period of artistic and cultural vivacity, and was the site of countless parties, many as described in Fitzgerald’s fantastic novel.

I’m a sucker for period architecture, so it’s sad to see a beautiful house with a storied history get reduced to rubble. But at the very least, it’s nice to see it live on in the pages of a novel that certainly claims a firm spot within American literature.