Toronto demolitions rarely get the implosion treatment.

Buildings being torn down are long civic autopsies; internal organs are laid bare for all to see. We can peer in as walls are removed and see once-private wallpaper patterns and toilets exposed in compromising ways. We might even feel a little embarrassed for a building in this state.

This is happening now on the corner of Gerrard and Elizabeth, where a forty-three year old nurses’ residence is being deconstructed piece by piece.

Demolitions around Toronto rarely get the dramatic implosion treatment. Here we take them down like we put them up: bit-by-bit. The buildings resist destruction, as they were built to. They don’t go easy into history.

“The Residence,” as the building at 90 Gerrard St. W. was known, is a hulking concrete building, perhaps not the finest example of the currently out-of-fashion Brutalist style. A “1969” stamped in the sidewalk next to its sci-fi exterior marks its Apollo-age opening.

There’s a sense something is wrong when a newer building is torn down; the inherent waste of things that haven’t had time to live out their full potential. The German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten — which translates to “collapsing new buildings” — got its name from the absurd throwaway building culture in Berlin after the war. They could have made a Toronto album.

Today buildings are torn down differently. LEED certifications — the environmental standard many buildings try to achieve — requires materials from buildings being replaced be reused. Fewer buildings are being torn town completely, and many are incorporated into new buildings.

In the GTA we’re used to buildings going up. More cranes in the sky than most cities on earth. Go out of a town for a couple weeks and you return home to a different skyline. Once a building is finished and people move in, we tend to forget that there was a time it wasn’t there. The city we see is the city we know, and our memories are physically rooted; once a building disappears, they can float away too. It’s why buildings on death row are so compelling. Just do a Google search of the abandoned Kodak building at Eglinton Ave. W. and Black Creek Drive and see how many urban explorers have documented it.

In most every city people will tell you their city is the worst at tearing good buildings down, and Torontonians are no different. We’ve lost some great buildings here, and though condos often get the blame, most were already gone before the latest boom, one that’s filling in our parking lots more than anything else.

Back downtown two other concrete hotels from the late 1960s are being converted into condo dwellings, just as the old Imperial Oil headquarters on St. Clair was. The Four Seasons in Yorkville has been stripped to its bones while Sutton Place on Bay St. is set to have its delicate concrete exterior — a thin gem from the space age era — wrapped in a flashy and momentarily fashionable new skin.

Do memories stick around when a building is just renovated? Ask yourself in a couple years and see if you remember what was there.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about life in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.