Brooklyn Academy of Music

When the Brooklyn Academy of Music burned to the ground on November 30, 1903, taking with it decades of cultural history, something unexpected happened: the institution’s stock price rose. The Montague Street property was simply too valuable. Five years later, theater architects Herts & Tallant delivered a grander replacement in Fort Greene, opening with Enrico Caruso singing Faust. Today it remains America’s oldest continuously operating performing arts center, founded in 1861.

The fire started backstage, likely from a gas leak, while stagehands were striking sets for a banquet. Within minutes the 2,200-seat auditorium was gone, and with it went a building that had hosted Edwin Booth’s Hamlet, Mark Twain readings, and the celebration for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn’s response was not mourning but real estate math: the land was worth more than the ash, and the institution rebuilt bigger a few blocks away. It has since collected a National Medal of Arts and outlasted every performing arts center that opened after it, which is either a triumph of civic willpower or proof that Brooklyn simply refuses to let a good address go to waste.