Last week builders began tearing down Phnom Penh’s famous White Building, the former home of almost 500 families who were given compensation packages to move out.

Originally known as the Municipal Apartments, the building officially opened to residents in 1963, and was intended to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income families. It was designed by Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap and Russian architect Vladimir Bodiansky as part of the capital’s urban transformation following independence from France.

Watch our video to see the building in its final days, and look back at its surroundings decades ago — when it was flanked by well-kept lawns and the shiny new Olympic Village apartments, now called the Phnom Center.

You can also see the building as residents began to move out in our video here.