The Banality of Gilding: Innocuous Materiality and Transatlantic Consumption in the Gilded Age

This paper examines Gilded Age affluence by focusing on apparently inconsequential decorative goods and assessing how such goods were part of shared transatlantic patterns that reached beyond the Gilded Age and the confines of urban America. The paper focuses on figurines recovered from nineteenth-century sites in London and underscores how the American Gilded Age amplified many early nineteenth-century material patterns and ideological practices that were well-established in the United Kingdom and continued after the height of Gilded Age affluence. This study examines the symbolism of such aesthetically eclectic goods and focuses on the socially grounded imagination that was invested in them borrowing from dominant ideologies and idiosyncratic personal experiences alike.     

Assessment of Multi-Wythe Stone Masonry Subjected to Seismic Hazards

Heritage stone buildings are typically vulnerable to seismic events. Results of an experimental program were analyzed to evaluate the shear strength and intrinsic damping of stone masonry representative of the West Block of the Canadian Parliamentary Precinct in Ottawa. Eight representative wall specimens with different rehabilitation schemes had been tested under different static and dynamic loadings. Each wall had wythes of sandstone and limestone connected by a rubble core. The results show the shear strength of the walls could be predicted accurately and that no strengthening scheme was particularly beneficial. The effective viscous damping ratios varied between 7 and 9%.