With Baltimore’s old and sort-of old buildings so regularly facing the wrecking ball these days – and reactions ranging from “Hell no!” to “Let it go!” – this long essay on Baltimore Memorial Stadium may be worth a read.

“When does architecture, once started, stop?” asks Keith Eggener, who teaches architectural history at the University of Missouri. “Does it end when human occupation or attention terminates, when function or fabric are removed? What is the connection between civic buildings and collective memory?”

Memorial Stadium, built beginning in 1949 and demolished in 2001, “lives on today in some surprising and remarkably tangible ways,” Eggener writes, in “The Demolition and Afterlife of Baltimore Memorial Stadium,” in the current issue of the contemporary architecture and urbanism journal “Places.”

Among the factoids you’ll find in this piece: the going rate for an authenticated seat from the ballpark where the Orioles played in their heyday: about $650.

Eggener includes quotes from the documentary The Last Season, with people interviewed emphasizing “their connection to the place, the effect of its decay and possible destruction upon themselves, the ache they felt in watching these things occur.”

“You never thought you could get so attached to a building, but it’s going to be hard seeing this thing going down. . . It’s like losing a friend.”