Contact Info & Address

Summary of Completed Projects

Map of Downtown Palo Alto Projects

Overall view prior to earthquake. This old city hall is at corner of Monterey Road and Sixth Street, in Gilroy, CA. The building has a full-thickness veneer brick with sandstone accents over standard unreinforced masonry construction on the two street elevations. Portions of the second floor wall are supported on twin steel beams.

Veneer bricks along Sixth Street shifted in-plane, creating variable gaps, as can be seen over the window. There was a very flexible tie to the 3-wythe brick wall behind this veneer.

Portions of the curved wall above the second floor windows shifted out of plane, as well as cracking in-plane.

The parapet above the main curved entry fell to the sidewalk. The curved glass window also broke.

The typical three-wythe brick veneer construction cracked in-plane at various weak points. The end of a ‘dog-iron’ tied to a wood roof truss can be seen near this corner.

The unbraced rear parapet that fell outwards was only two wythes thick.

The original plaster interior cracked and fell off the brick exterior walls at the high stress locations.

The masonry wall top within the clock tower came apart easily. Note that the white veneer brick is actually supporting some framing, and did not fall into the tower attic floor. There were no mechanical ties or bolts between the wall tops and the wood framing.

The back wall had been neglected, with various repairs made over time. A defunct landscaping sprinkler system had been eroding the soft mortar in the lower courses.

Destructive examination work indicates there were some traditional ‘dog irons’ embedded in the masonry and hooked into the second floor framing. Note the traditional wood lath and plaster ceiling below. Above this point, the back wall is only two-wythes thick.

The roof trusses were embedded into the wall, with only minor amounts of decay found. The horizontal wood plate below each truss created a weak point in the masonry wall construction, and was removed during the rehabilitation work. The trusses now hang from a reinforced concrete parapet beam.

In-plane shear tests were performed at various locations by removing a brick for the hydraulic test jack, then cutting out the head joint beyond the brick to be tested. Typically, the horizontal mortar above and below fails, and the brick slides over. The force required to move the test brick is then translated into an in-plane mortar shear strength value for design purposes.

The exterior veneer brick was not interlocked or mortared to the adjacent brick. A flexible metal tie was used to connect the veneer to the standard bearing wall red brick behind it. Since the veneer brick is smaller than the standard red brick, the ties had to be bent in a Z-shape, as can be seen in this photo.