A few weeks back I had the chance to shoot the demolition of the 111 year old Terrace Avenue school building here in New Castle, PA. The demolition was an emergency demo due to the fact that one of the walls had collapsed earlier, and thus the city had no choice but to bring the rest down. According to the local paper, the demo was stopped at one point by the state due to concerns of asbestos, but on the day I was there the demo was in full swing. Since I found out about the demo a short time after it had started, a majority of the building had already been brought down by machine prior to the pics I took. When I was there, they were in the process of bringing down the bell tower, which was too high to be done by machines and had to be demoed by hand.

In the pics below you’ll see the crew working the top of the tower, standing on the floor of the bell room that housed the school’s bell, which was laying nearby rather solemnly. There was a dome and cross above the room that added another 20-30ft in height to the structure, but that had been removed the day before. The entire time, firefighters were spraying water onto the rubble pile in an effort to keep the dust to a minimum, which also added a bit of drama to the scene, and can really be felt in the pics I took of the lonely, fallen bell. Ironically, I also came across an old election sign laying nearby for school director, which together with the fallen bell, gave the scene a strong sense of finality and being a somewhat gritty end to the long era of the school’s existence.