A controlled explosion turned the Woodward's building, a 103-year-old retail landmark in Vancouver's downtown east side, into rubble and dust on Saturday.

Using a technique called a roll-over, where walls fold into each other one by one, demolition crews used 100 kilograms of explosives to set off a series of quick and consecutive blasts.

The explosion leveled the building on Hastings Street W. in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in seconds.

An audience of hundreds of people, many of them who have bought condominiums scheduled to go up in its place, watched and cheered as it went down at 8:30 a.m.

From its humble beginnings in 1903, the store expanded over the years to become a major Vancouver attraction. Additions over the years turned it into a mammoth structure that took up two thirds of a city block.

The explosion left the original portion of the building standing. It will be incorporated into the new structure.

"You could feel it in your feet, it ran all the way," said one onlooker of the blast. "It was like a rock concert with a big bang. It was awesome!"

More than 100 windows in nearby buildings shattered in the explosion, but will be replaced by the developers of the new site.

Many in the crowd recalled their families shopping there for both groceries and household items, and fondly remembered the store's Christmas window displays.

Marc Burchell, a former assistant manager who worked at Woodward's for 19 years, showed the kind of employee loyalty Woodward's was famous for. "Seeing the building crumble ... was like losing a friend, he said.

"I'll tell you how important it was to our family," Burchell said: "My son said Woodward's before he said dada."

The building had been vacant since the store closed in 1993. It was designated a heritage building in November 1996.

A series of attempts to redevelop the site failed, and in September 2002, a group of homeless people and community groups occupied it, demanding social housing. A tent city created on the sidewalk outside became known as the Woodward's Squat. That December, the city found alternative housing for most of the squatters.

The City of Vancouver bought it from the province in March 2003 and developed a plan that would preserve the original building in a new development. The large and distinctive "W," added to the building in 1944, will be showcased on top a prominent tower.

Plans for the new construction will turn the site into a combination of family and single housing units, with shops and services, community space, a public green space, and a child-care centre.

With a report from CTV's St. John Alexander