Inspectors sifted through rubble Friday afternoon to find out why bricks from the façade of a building near Ryerson University came crashing down on the sidewalk.

“We don’t know what caused it,” said Ann Borooah, executive director and chief building official for the city.

She said a building permit had been issued for renovations in a first-floor unit of the building on Gould St. near Yonge St. and that there likely “would have been a building inspection. What we don’t know is if that had anything to do with the collapse.”

A large part of Ryerson University’s campus and several streets in the downtown core were shut down at about 12:30 p.m. Friday when the bricks began raining down.

A Toronto Fire spokesperson said the bricks fell from the second floor of the three-storey building, leaving piles of debris on the sidewalk. Police search-and-rescue dogs combed through the building to make sure nobody was trapped. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

Midday and rush-hour traffic snarled after police closed Yonge St. from Dundas St. north to Gerrard St., and along Gould from Yonge St. to Victoria St., while emergency crews worked at the scene.

City Councillor Kyle Rae, whose ward includes the building, visited the site Friday afternoon. “It was just devastating to see it,” he said.

Rae recalled securing money for a “heritage façade grant” of up to $35,000 for the building about three years ago.

“But I don't think they ever did it,” he said. “It was for the heritage building, for the external façade. ... I remember fighting to get it into the budget.”

According to a Ministry of Government Services Corporation Profile report, the building is owned by a numbered company whose administrator Noorali Lalani could not be reached for comment.

According to the City of Toronto website, an application for interior alterations on the ground floor at 335 Yonge St. had been issued Nov. 24, 2009. The work was being done on the new 54-seat Tatami restaurant which opened recently. It’s one of several linked units that comprise the building. Tatami is next door to the unit where the bricks fell.

The website noted that an inspection had been scheduled Feb. 17, 2010. According to Borooah, “There were inspections but no request for a final inspection to date.”

Borooah said city inspectors were at the scene “looking at what needs to be done to make the building safe. And it’s likely that either the owner will be undertaking work under our orders or we’ll have to do it ourselves in the next little while.”

One of the reasons for the collapse may have been extensive renovations and alterations to the building over the years, said Dave Bowick, a professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.

Large sections of the wall on the Gould St. side had been knocked out and replaced with big windows and glass doors, he said.

“The storefront opening and glazing wouldn’t be the original condition of the building when it was built,” he said Friday after viewing a photo, adding the three-storey structure would only have had small windows on the upper levels. Changes to the building over the years “to create more openness to the street,” may have been factors.

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But there are other reasons walls collapse. Bowick said moisture creeping into bricks could cause a wall to collapse because repeated freezing and contraction could push them apart.

With files from Robyn Doolittle and Kristin Rushowy