108 THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE. 
UNION TRUST COMPANY'S BUILDING. 
The ordinary steel-frame Union Trust Building, with terra-cotta 
fireproofing, came through the earthquake in about the same condi- 
tion as the average fireproof building in Baltimore after the fire. 
From the exterior it presented the appearance of having stood the 
ordeal about as well as any other building in San Francisco that 
was completely gutted. The damage, however, was probably at 
least as great as that suffered by such buildings as the Continental 
Trust in Baltimore. Lower webs were off in many places, and 
column and girder coverings were damaged to a considerable extent 
(P1.L.2?). 
MISCELLANEOUS STRUCTURES. 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
A number of buildings of fire-resistant construction in San Fran- 
cisco, such as the Mutual Savings Bank, the Hibernia Bank (see PL 
XXXVII, A), and several others, have not been specifically men- 
tioned in this report, but they presented nothing of more than ordi- 
nary interest. Detailed descriptions have been given of at least 
one example of everything that was typical, and practically every- 
thing described in detail was typical of many other cases of the 
same general class. 
A building at First and Natoma streets had naked cast-iron 
columns, steel girders, reenforced-concrete beams from girder to 
girder, and reenforced-concrete slabs from beam to beam. The 
reenforcement of the concrete beams consisted of plain round rods 
passing through the webs of the girders and fastened with nuts in 
the same way as tie-rods. The aggregate of the concrete, in the 
beams at least, seems to have been of stone. Some of the slabs looked 
as if some cinders had been used in them, but this appearance may 
have been due to damage by the fire. At any rate the concrete was 
very badly damaged, as will be seen in some of the rear bays of the 
upper floor. Where the deflection was worst there may have been 
something precipitated upon the floor, but even at other points con- 
siderable deflection was apparent, together with serious damage to 
the concrete. It was evident, from the beams hanging down in the 
front, that in erecting this building the forms for the beams were 
filled first and the slabs were put on afterwards, so that there was 
no adequate bond between the beams and the slabs. The reenforce- 
ment of the slabs in this building was a very light twisted-wire mesh, 
and the only wonder is that it held as well as it did. The remains 
of a furred wire-lath ceiling were visible, and the failure of this 
ceiling is typical of what occurred in many other buildings. 
