The Savoy-Plaza, one of New York City’s most elegant and legendary hotels, stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th street, currently the site of the General Motors Building. This fabulously grand Beaux-Arts pile was designed by McKim Meade and White and opened in 1907. Less than 60 years later–in 1965 to be exact–it was demolished to make way for the GM building. Now, New York City is all about progress and the GM building has, by now, acquired a certain mid-century charm of its own. But with so many other corners to pick on, why destroy a hotel of such distinctions and history? The early to mid-sixties were an architectural bloodbath in the city and the destruction of the Savoy and, even more shockingly, the original Pennsylvania Station seemed to jolt the city into the realization that certain buildings needed to be protected from overeager developers. Thus the Landmarks Preservation laws were put into place. The above mini-doc does a decent enough job telling the story of The Savoy, although the A.I. generated voice rankles me. Although it’s a big improvement over previous robot-voices used for narration, it gives itself away with a simple and avoidable tell; when saying the name of a certain year–say, 1897–it sometimes says it correctly…and sometimes calls it “one-thousand eight-hundred and ninety-seven”. Why not simply hire a human to do it properly? Answer: the A.I. voice is free–or at least will be the more it’s used. And thus we come too another subject too massive and groan-inducing to indulge in; the replacement of humans by A.I. tech. Which is its own form of demolition I suppose and may require the passage of a law called ‘The Humans Preservations Act’…