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The More Things Stay The Same

Above, an article from the Real Estate Record and Guide of October 15, 1910. It speaks for itself to some degree, and, based on the general topic, could have been written pretty much any decade from the 1880s to today.

The good news (paragraph three): the case was apparently decided on the basis of expert testimony by qualified people. That is not always how these things play out. The bad news is that no one seems to have been particularly upset by a six-inch out-of-plumb condition.

The most interesting technical aspect is in the fourth paragraph: if the whole building is tilted it’s much safer than if one wall is tilted. One wall moving means it’s pulling away from the rest of the building and therefore unstable. The whole building being tilted means it’s moving as a unit, and the whole building is much stronger than a single wall.

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