A four-story residential brick building that was being renovated in East Boston partially collapsed Sunday afternoon and will be demolished early Monday to prevent another collapse, according to the Boston Fire Department.
Fire officials received a call at 12:18 p.m. for a partial collapse at 4 Winthrop St., where the rear of the third and fourth floors had caved in, said Marc Sanders, a spokesman for the department.
No one was injured, but 28 residents in adjacent buildings have been displaced, said Fire Commissioner Joseph Finn.
A 70-year-old tax practitioner, Grace Magoon, was working in a one-story office next door when the collapse occurred.
“All of a sudden it sounded like an explosion . . . and then there was some hitting on top of the roof. I knew I was being hit,’’ she recalled. “It kept coming for about four minutes.’’
The owner of Magoon’s office building, Danilo Avalon, said he was relieved Magoon wasn’t hurt. “Thankfully she wasn’t in the ladies room, because that’s essentially where it collapsed,’’ he said.
At a press conference Sunday afternoon, Commissioner of Inspectional Services William Christopher said the partially collapsed building would have to be demolished.
“We’ve made the determination that we’re going to take the building down,’’ he said, noting that there was imminent risk of collapse. He said cranes and other machinery were being moved in late Sunday, and that demolition would begin at “first light’’ Monday.
The collapse also caused a gas leak, so officials shut down the utilities to the street on Sunday, he said.
“The building is not stable enough for us to let people in to shore it up,’’ Christopher said.
Connor McCormack, development associate at MG2 Group, said he represents the building’s owner, but declined to give the owner’s name. He said that Alaris Construction was the general contractor for renovation work that had just begun on the building.
“It’s still relatively within the stage it was when we acquired it,’’ he said. “If the building does come down it is going to obviously be back to the drawing board.’’
As for the building next door, 36 and 38 Maverick Square, Avalon said he bought it three years ago. “We just finished literally completely redoing everything, and it looks like we have some more work to do now,’’ he said.
It is unclear if weather, such as snow that may have accumulated on the structure overnight, was a factor in the collapse, Sanders said.
Winthrop Street is one block long and runs between the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center and a cluster of older buildings in Maverick Square.
It’s an area that has seen at least two other building collapses over the last several years. In summer 2015, the rear wall of a building partially crumbled at 175 Maverick St., about three blocks from Winthrop Street.
In 2011, a condemned and unoccupied building at 47 Chelsea St.collapsedafter heavy rains and destabilized an adjacent four-story apartment building, leading the city to demolish that structure two days later.
Correspondent Adam Sennott contributed to this report. Lucas Phillips can be reached at lucas.phillips@globe.com. Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.