Traditional seismic retrofit approaches for buildings have tended to rely solely on providing increased strength and stiffness to resist lateral forces. For many structures, recent performance type codes, such as FEMA 273, allow the design engineer to enhance seismic resistance by improving or simply recognizing a structure's ability to deform under strong ground shaking. As an active participant in the development of these new retrofitting standards, R&C consistently employs the latest performance based design methods. By applying these new technologies, we have been able to reduce required strengthening, which not only limits cost, but also minimizes the impact to historic architectural elements.