Gone In 8 Photos: Watch The Demolition of One Of Amarillo’s First buildings.

Anyone who was around to see the demolition of this piece of Amarillo history must have been lucky.

In 1965, the then 76-year-old Amarillo Hotel was demolished in a spectacular fashion, proving a spectacle for onlookers at the time to watch and unlikely forget, and for you to see thanks to these photos that have immortalized this scene in local history.

The Amarillo Hotel was originally built in 1889 on 3rd & Polk only three weeks after the town of Amarillo was incorporated. It was originally a smaller, wooden building housing thirty rooms but throughout the year new attachments and additions to the building would be added.

Eventually, parts of the original building would be burned down, but the new brick portions of the building that were built would remain and serve as the primary stay for visitors.

The building and the business would house guests coming from all over America, until 1965 when it went out of business and closed its doors to the public. The building would remain abandoned and unused until 1978 when it was demolished by implosion.

According to eyewitnesses, the entire structure only took 8 seconds to be completely demolished.

And thankfully, each second was captured and saved for us to look back on.

Here are the photos

Although those 8 seconds may have been entertaining, it's a shame that it took that long to erase so many years of history. Imagine what it could have been if it had been given another chance.

As we've seen lately, it's not impossible to rehabilitate buildings that would be considered "out-of-date" by many. The Barfield Hotel, The Saint Anthony's Hospital, and even the Herring Hotel which will be getting renovations soon all prove this point.

Hopefully, we can rebuild and breathe new life into the older parts of our city before we completely let them go.