Vintage Structural Clay Tile

You might look here: (free download).



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I don't think it's well suited for a retaining wall, but you can find some information on terra cotta block in Kidder Parker Architect's and Builder's Handbook. I think you can find it available digitally online or through ebuy. I uploaded a couple pages that may help.

The reference to Plummer's "Brick and Tile Engineering" from JAE is excellent. That will have a lot of properties of the units as well as the walls that you are analyzing. There is also an earlier version of that book, just of tile, called "Principles of Tile Engineering" which is also helpful, but maybe redundant:
As for codes, there weren't any real masonry codes until ANSI A41.1 that came out in the 1950's. Before that it was just empirical design and "whatever worked, we'll do that again".

Finally, a great source of information on archaic construction materials is in the Association for Preservation Technology's (APT) Building Technology Heritage Library which can be found here: This site contains all sorts of manufacturer's literature from back in the day and shows a variety of applications that we don't use today.