Boyston Street Demolition

Work crews arrived just after 6 a.m. on February 20, 2007 to begin demolishing the building at 815 Boylston Street in Boston (Mass.), the future site of an Apple store.

The work began at about 7 a.m.,and within an hour they had one-quarter of the building torn down as a yellow excavator machine clawed at the red-brick and wood structure, reducing it to rubble that was hauled off by trucks. The work went very quickly, and about 7/8ths of the existing building was removed the very first day.

It appears the entire store could be removed by week's end. Here are some photos of the first work.

Before the work crews arrived the building was dark and covered in snow.

Just after 7 a.m. the yellow hydraulic excavator reaches out to make it first bite at the rear of the building.

The demolition continues by knocking off the right-rear corner of the building using a hydraulic excavator machine. The building is basically wooden timbers faced with red-brick, and goes down pretty easily.

Within 90 minutes the building was basically half gone. Notice that the upper floor of what is left has a brick facing, indicating the location of the original rear of the building, which was apparently later expanded.

By the end of Tuesday, almost all of the building is gone. You can see wood timbers stacked up on the right side o the lot, probably for recycling. On the second floor of what remains, you can see plywood covering what were the front windows of the old copy shop. So just a small portion of the original structure is still standing.

At the start of week #2, the weather was rarely above 34 degrees and the work site was sometimes covered with snow. The front structure of the building was mostly removed, and work continued on sorting the debris and loading it into trucks.

By the middle of week #2 most of the large wood debris had been carted off, and what was left was smaller debris and red bricks. Notice that there is a layer of brick wall on the left side of the adjacent building, and that those bricks have been scrapped off in the next photo.

The yellow excavator just before it was trucked away from the site, leaving only bricks to be removed by the smaller Bobcat front loader. Both side walls have been scrapped of their bricks, and most of the site's foundation is visible. The green material at street level at the front of the building (far end) is screening tied to the front construction fence. The bottom of the green material is the sidewalk level. This is essentially how the site was left when the demolition team finished their work.