There were half a dozen blank spaces where other leaders had once stood.
Thomas had been wrong to think nothing more than a "rude fort" had once stood there.
The three-quarter-acre site where a parking garage had once stood had degenerated into an empty, dirt-filled tract.
Overhead, a grid of conduit pipes followed the old floor plan, where hundreds of knitting machines had once stood.
Susan made herself stare at the ashes and rubble in the vast pit where the Trade Center had once stood.
Shrivastava's men asked whether anyone remembered a series of statues of women that had once stood nearby.
A grid of piers sat in the grass, little white platforms forming a curious grid on which a house had once stood.
The crew also made it look as if grass seed was going to be planted, covering the area where the trees had once stood.
Mr. Carter, Senator Mondale said, would be an unusually effective man to unify the Democratic Party, albeit he had once stood outside its inner hierarchy.
He includes a picture of them in front of a map of the camp that attempts to evoke what had once stood on these empty fields.
The house had once stood alone, surrounded by open country, but after a spate of development in the area, it was now flanked by other houses.
