Unhidden Flaws

A wall in the Bronx, seen from the same building’s roof, looking across a courtyard:

Putting aside the truly horrendous pointing, there are some problems with the original brickwork, which is why we there. Most of the wall is common bond, with headers every six courses to tie the veneer wythe – the face brick – to the back-up brick. The veneer brick is a bit nicer than common brick (although it’s hard to see because of that terrible pointing) but it has the same module, the same size, so the headers work just fine as a tie mechanism. The problems are with the window surrounds and other ornament. Start at the top floor: the piers at at either jamb (stacked stretcher bricks plus stacked soldiers) are not tied by headers and they are where the window mountings put some put-of-plane pressure on the wall when the wind blows. The five “stone” blocks (I’m fairly sure they’re cast stone – precast concrete – but I took this picture six years ago, so I don’t remember for certain) are only embedded in the veneer wythe and so are not tied in. The arch is the same situation as the the jamb piers; the semi-circle within the arch consists of half-bricks so it’s not tied. After this description, I’m guess it’s no surprise if I say that we were asked to look at the facade because some of the ornament was moving outward.

The window at the floor below has similar problems with the jambs and with the soldier course above its lintel. The combination of the cast-stone water-table between two solider courses created a weak band running around the entire facade.

So why would anyone do this? First of all, if you want to provide some ornament on a brick wall, this is an inexpensive way to do so, assuming your mason has a moderate level of skill (unlike the masons who did that horrible pointing). Second, this is a 1920s New Law tenement, and the building type was still fairly new at that time. Older brick buildings had more solidly-built veneer, for example with stone ornament that extended into the back-up and not just the veneer. I’ve seen plenty of older buildings where stone window sills and lintels are the main ties between the veneer and the back-up. In other words, the long-term implications of this kind of cost-cutting weren’t yet apparent when this building was constructed.