Historic Hoover Middle School

San Jose, California

This 1930’s vintage concrete building has been retrofitted and returned to public educational use utilizing performance-based seismic design methods per the FEMA 273 and ATC-40 guidelines as permitted by Division III-R of the California Building Code. These methods allowed preservation of the buildings historic fabric, which is highly valued by the community, and also yielded significant savings in construction cost for the San Jose Unified School District, which made it feasible for the project to proceed. Testing of existing construction materials was undertaken to meet DSA requirements as well as to obtain accurate values for analysis. The architect for the project was the Steinberg Group; the general contractor was Toeniskoetter & Breeding, Inc. both of San Jose, CA.