Out-of-Plane Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Turn-of-the-Century North American Masonry Walls

Three masonry walls with their wood backing were extracted from an old three-story residential building. These specimens are representative of a type of construction widely used in North America circa 1900, in which a single wythe exterior masonry wall was tied only with nails to the timber structure, leaving an irregular gap between the masonry and timber walls. To seismically retrofit such buildings, special seismic-resistant anchorage of the …