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The 1968 Democratic Convention is long past, and the International Amphitheatre is gone, but what happened there was a landmark event in boomer history ...

Few images represent the 1960s in Chicago like the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And though its associated visions are of huge protests in Grant Park and Lincoln Park and along Michigan Avenue, the building that housed it is only a distant memory.

An Aramark plant now stands along South Halsted Street where Chicago's famed International Amphitheatre entertained generations in the shadows of the Union Stockyards. Built in 1934 to host livestock auctions, the Amphitheatre's size and amenities boosted Chicago to the forefront of the convention business.

The Amphitheatre became a first-rate venue for sports and entertainment, hosting the Bulls' first season and many wrestling matches. The Beatles played their first Chicago show there, and Elvis Presley donned his gold lame suit for the first time on its stage.

But its lasting legacy is one week in August 1968 when protestors descended on the city and clashed with police almost continuously. Images of Chicago police beating back anti-war protesters, demonstrators building bonfires in Lincoln Park and a hastily engineered pro-Mayor Daley rally to counter the demonstrators serve as reminders of the turmoil.

As protesters marched along Michigan Avenue and clashed with police in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, a national audience watched in horror. After delegates inside the Amphitheatre endorsed a pro-war platform, protests grew more violent –- so violent that a political convention didn't return to Chicago until Bill Clinton's second nomination in 1996.

There is no lasting marker to commemorate the International Amphitheatre, which was demolished in 1999 after McCormick Place and the Rosemont Horizon became the venues of choice. But the events that happened outside and inside the Amphitheater in August of 1968 (including Mayor Daley being caught on camera saying some unsavory words) doomed Hubert Humphrey's nomination and remain indelibly inscribed on our boomer memory.

The memories will far outlast the building itself.