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Sidebar-In an Earthquake Boston Would Behave like Jello

Written by Chuck Redmon

The old warehouse that everybody loved when you walked in the doors....giant timbers and brick walls. It felt good—a friendly place. And if the structural code people had their way you would have lost the character of the building.

So the idea was very simple. On the top of all the floors we put two pieces of plywood, one running this way and one running that way. That created what was called a "diaphragm." And then tie rods were drawn across the building, through the wall, and fastened with star bolts (pictured below). It was very, very interesting, very economical, and very elegant solution.