Brian Petingalo brings down the house (21 photos, video)

Demolishing stuff is a lot like construction in reverse, says Brian Petingalo of Petingalo Contractors.

Yesterday, a crane from Millennium Crane Rental Ltd. was brought onto the old Algoma Theatre site to take apart the arch and much of the building's structural steel.

The painstaking work involved two men on a snorkel lift, slinging cables from the crane to the steel tresses, loosening the tresses and then getting out of the way for the crane to pull that section off.

This had to happen for every section.

Our photo gallery shows that the four workers on site managed to pull down a good section of the building on Saturday before the rain came down.

Petingalo himself was left to tidy up with the excavator under periodic cloud bursts.

He said they'll be saving the east wall and portions of the west wall up to a height of about ten feet and incoporating those elements into the new structure.

The fate of the arches is still unknown.

To see a stop-motion video of some of yesterday's demolition work, click here.