Chattanooga is an old city with dozens of buildings that remain from the late 1800's and early 20th century.
City leaders encourage developers to save and patch-up those structures when they can.
But it's not always possible, as we saw Thursday morning when one of them collapsed.
No one was in the old building on MLK when two walls collapsed and the roof fell in about 8:15 am.
Firefighters arrived quickly and began checking, just to be sure.
BRUCE GARNER, CHATTANOOGA FIRE DEPARTMENT "They brought in some special cameras and looked around inside the debris to make sure nobody was in there..maybe a homeless person, somebody like that."
Vehicles parked along-side were damaged and the 300 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard was shut down much of the day while the cleanup got underway.
Gary Ball of Tower Construction had recently bought the 80 year old building from MLK Development.
GARY BALL, TOWER CONSTRUCTION CO. "The climatic cycle..the freeze and thaw, change in temperature evidently just got the best of our old building there."
Workers removed the cars, and scraped-up most of the bricks by noon..and then waited until natural gas lines were cut off before heavy equipment pulled down the other wall.
GARY BALL "We'll finish the demolition and fill it in and have a nice downtown development lot. "
The city likes to keep its historic buildings when possible.
MAYOR RON LITTLEFIELD, CHATTANOOGA "This is a larger tragedy this morning than it might appear, I mean it's a roof collapse, but it takes one more piece out of the history of old 9th street or MLK Boulevard."
The Land Development Office of the city Public Works Department deals with a lot of those old buildings. Assistant Director Dallas Rucker identifies the main problem.
DALLAS RUCKER, ASSISTANT DIR., DEVELOPMENT SERVICES "Deterioriation...and neglect. They stand there and if you don't go by and look at them but once every 6 months..you don't always notice deterioriation taking place."
Rucker's office would issue work permits to re-hab those old buildings.
Residents of an apartment complex next to the collapsed building were evacuated while the work was going on.
MLK Boulevard remained closed until the area was secured.
