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Two enormous backhoes began tearing down the Negro Community Centre in Little Burgundy, Thursday at 7 a.m. — the final chapter for a historic building that housed a church, a community centre and dance classes.

The pincer-like jaws of the backhoes pulled down steel beams, and brick and drywall followed.

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Many of the pieces of building material that crashed to the ground were charred, testament to a fire years ago in the long abandoned building. The water damage from fire hoses added to the general decay that beset the building on Coursol St.

Any stained-glass windows the church had at one time have long gone, replaced with graffiti and plywood. Those, too, were ripped down by the hoes.

“I’ve been watching it deteriorate for 20 years, and I don’t think it could have been saved,” said Hugh Ball, who lives in a condo behind the church.

“You would have had to tear it down to the ground to even think about rebuilding and they had zero money to do anything.”

In the late 1980s, Ball remembers reggae dances held in the church where the music would blast through the walls and across the parking lot to his home behind.

No so much for the past two decades.

Squatters, graffiti, water damage and a leaking roof, the former Church was beset with all the ills of a rundown building in a formerly poor part of town.