Piece by piece, Prairie Village landmark disappears from skyline

With the help of a gigantic crane on Friday, workers deconstructed the water tower that has stood high above McCrum Park for more than a half century.

For the past few days, crews had used blowtorches to score lines along the tank’s exterior. On Friday, they hooked the tank panels to the crane as workers cut away at a few un-scored stretches of metal, setting each piece free. The crane then lowered each panel down to the ground:

PVPost.com reader Tony Moore has a great photo set of the process on Flickr.

Dozens of local residents stopped to watch the dismantling of the tower — with some lamenting the landmark’s demise. One man (whose name we didn’t catch) told us he would miss having the tower in his neighborhood.

“We used to climb up that thing,” he said. “Climbing water towers was a real thing back in the ’60s and ’70s. But the ladder didn’t go all the way to the top back then. You had to climb up it using the crossbars.”