I visited Filene's more than once, starting in the '60s. I'm surprised the crane was pulling and scraping stuff into the street instead of pushing it into the center of the building.
Wow, how sad. I worked at Jordan Marsh across the street from 1984 until it merged with Abraham and Straus in NYC in 1992. What exactly is in Downtown Crossing now? The last I was down there was in 2005. It was fairly scary, just a ghost town.