Leigh Frillici's 11 News report

Neither the cold nor the early hour could keep them away.

“I actually slept in my office and got up and went down,” Ana Fox said.

They are fans of demolitions, and they descended upon downtown Houston Sunday morning to watch the Montague Hotel come down.

“I lived at the Montague Hotel, the one that’s coming down. I lived there for a year,” Robert Dafft said.

The hotel opened up in 1913 on Fannin Street.  Over the past several years it fell on hard times.

But Sunday it went out with a bang.

“This will be interesting, coming off of New Year’s Eve. This will be our fireworks,” Ron Tips said.

It was the first on many blasts for the block.

The Montague isn’t the only structure set for demolition in the name of progress the area. In fact, all but one of the buildings on the block will soon come down.  

Cherry Demolition was in charge of taking down the Montague.

“You powder the floors, that way you see footprints,” Division Manager Mike Dokell said.

It’s an important step to make sure no one is in the doomed building.

“We took the same precautions that we took this time, that we took last time,” Dokell said.

“Last time” was back in November, when the Crowne Plaza in the Medical Center was reduced to rubble.

The demolition made national news after an amateur video raised questions as to whether someone was inside at the time of the implosion.

After a search, officials determined no one was in the building.

Back at the Montague, 400 pounds of dynamite ignited, bringing what had stood for nine decades to the ground in just seconds.

“Out with the old, in with the new,” Dafft said.

And demolition fans found, once again, that change can be a good thing.

Hines, an international real estate firm, is building a 46-sotry office tower on the block.  It will be called MainPlace, and the grand opening is slated for 2011.