Pause for a moment to say farewell to one of those unremarkable buildings you never notice until the machines show up and claw it to rubble.

It had a name:

All those bricks, hand-laid; that sign, hand-carved. The view from the front door on Wednesday afternoon looked clean through to the building on the other side of the street:

A few remnants of its past hung on for decades - here's the old alarm bell, with a board that probably had instructions on who to call it the thing was screaming FIRE or BURGLARS.

It's not an ornate building, but they did what they could with a tight budget:

Even the most modest buildings needed a few classical touches.

An ancient ghost ad on one side, punctured by windows - which were replaced by smaller ones, lest all that light distract people working inside:

In the end, scraps and rubble.

More tomorrow, or rather less; it'll be gone by the end of today. A parking ramp and hotel will rise on the side, making three full blocks under construction downtown. There was nothing about this one that made the preservationists take to the barricades, but it is regrettable to lose another old modest building, even if the replacement is more useful and throws off more tax revenue.

But try telling that to the litttle boy who was watching the demolition with his father yesterday, goggling at the great claw pulling the structure apart. It was the best thing he'd ever seen. Only a T-Rex kicking it down would have been better.