With some well-placed and strategic tugs, another large chunk of Buffalo history was reduced to a crumbled pile of steel and concrete.

The west wall of Memorial Auditorium was demolished Friday morning — a few weeks earlier than planned — leaving just a sliver of the venerable building’s southern section and two trusses that will be razed in the next week or 10 days.

The Aud is being demolished to make way for a 150,000-square-foot Bass Pro store that will anchor the $315 million Canal Side development in the lower Main Street section of downtown Buffalo. The Bass Pro store is slated to open in two years.

Friday morning’s focus was the Aud’s western wall that stretched from the lower bowl up more than eight stories to where the orange seats and press box once stood. Crews from West Seneca’s Demco spent several days prepping the wall for its date with a team of backhoes and excavators.

Scott Brady, Demco operations manager, said sections of the Aud’s steelwork were pre-cut to make for an easier demolition. Other columns were either loosened or removed.

“It’s really a controlled pull,” Brady said while watching his crew finish their final preparations.

In all, some 150 tons of concrete, steel and other building materials came crashing down with the wall.

Shortly before 10 a.m., the steel cables from the backhoes and excavator tightened and the first wave of concrete slabs — mostly flooring from the Aud’s red seat section began to crumble into a small cloud of dust.

The demolition was briefly halted when one of the cables snapped and had to be re-adjusted as the stubborn Aud fought to stay up.

By 10:15 a.m., the cable was re-attached and the crews were ready to go.

In a matter of seconds the wall began to shake and rumble.

Then, poof.

In a matter of seconds, the wall came down leaving behind a dust cloud that created a brief, deep-fog like appearance around Lower Terrace and Scott Street.

A polite round of applause was also heard as the dust cleared and all that was left behind was a one-story high pile of twisted steel and crushed concrete.

Brady said it will take the Demco crews a few days to clear the site and then their focus will be on the last two trusses that span what remains of the Aud’s roof and its southern section.

Originally, the western wall was supposed to be the last portion of the Aud to be razed, but Matt Davison, spokesman for the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., said when the building’s eastern wall came down so easily last week, the Demco crews decided to turn their attention to the western wall.

“They had such a success with eastern wall, that it made sense to do this wall first,” Davison said.

It will take most of the summer to clear the Aud site and make it shovel ready for the Bass Pro construction. A mandated environmental review of the project is expected to be completed this fall. The Bass Pro construction work will begin in earnest early next year.