A Leap Year Winner

This year's Academy Awards are over, but seventy-two years ago today Gone with the Wind won the best picture of 1939. On February 29, 1940 the Academy of Motion Pictures celebrated their 12th award presentations at the 1921 Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. You may remember seeing the hotel lobby from The Graduate, but the Ambassador is most famous as the site of the 1968 shooting of Robert Kennedy. Although Tara may live on, the hotel was demolished in 2005–6.

Frankly, we do give a damn! Did it have to go? Read more.

• Guidelines for Historic Restoration
• Adaptive Reuse of Older Buildings
• Restoring Antebellum Architecture, like Scarlett O'Hara

^{Photo of entrance to the Ambassador Hotel, 2004, by David McNew/Getty Images ©2004 Getty Images}