If the building is 14
stories high, and the terracotta was
all stacked into place, this means that there is nowhere for any stress
relief.
At one time we did a selective remove/replace of flat tc units in an
art deco construction (1920s) and what we found was that when we took
out a unit of tc that the units around it would suddenly crack. I
presume it was due to relief of stress. A structural engineer was never
brought in to look at that problem. It was not the mechanics or sloppy
removal work. The project required something like a doubling of the
quantity of units to be fabricated than had been originally assumed.