Partial Plates?

This picture from 120 Tradd Street shows earthquake plates at different levels along a belt course detail. All earthquake plates in Charleston are refits to existing buildings, and sometimes, the fir wasn’t easy to make. The technical name for these plates is “gib” plate, a technology that had existed long before the 1886 earthquake shattered Charleston walls with tremors measuring an estimated 7.3 on the Richter Scale (that’s because the Richter Scale didn’t exist until nearly fifty years later and all numbers are estimates). A gib plate is an adjustable metal brace, in which iron rods were connected by inserting through spaces between flooring and joining with a turnbuckle. To hold the wall in place theoretically, they were capped by a washer plate and bolted tight.
A belt course, like the one pictured, is an exterior detail made from extending the courses of brick at a certain point, then stuccoing over to create a spatial look between floors. It was less efficient to cut through the extra brick course than either above or below it, and if the brickmasons’ work was not level with the framing, the rod would be obstructed as it obviously was here, so either the separate rods go through at slightly different levels, or the belt course was removed and relaid between the plates, or they simply were cut to fit.
It was not uncommon to fix gib plates on damaged buildings were bricks had fallen and then re-brick over them, as can be seen from Stoll’s Alley on the Northwest corner of the house at 47 East Bay Street, whose corner “coin” had obviously come off during the earthquake, a gib plate affixed, then the coin rebuilt on top of the plate. So, if you look closely around Charleston, you will see the partial earthquake plate look in several locations.