Why Houses In the U.S. are Built of Wood

North America is unique compared to most of the world because their houses are built using light-weight wood framing as opposed to masonry or concrete.

Houses in the U.S. are built of wood due to the massive areas of available woodland, the convergence of technologies in timber production and transportation during the rapid growth of the nation in the late 1800’s, and the rapid growth of suburban housing in the last half of the twentieth century.

Today you typically see houses in the U.S. being built of various pieces of standardized wood components that create a frame for walls, floors, and roofs. This framing is then covered with large plywood panels to create the basic enclosure of the house. Using these standardized components is different from how houses were built in early America and Europe, and the story of how this came about is very interesting. Let’s take a look.

How the use of timber became preferred

When the east coast of America was first explored and settled by Europeans they found trees – lots and lots of trees. The whole of the east coast was covered with forest from the sea to the inland Appalachian Mountains.

The trees of these forests were seen as an easily available and easy to obtain resource to build the settlers’ first crude houses built primarily of logs stacked atop one another. Early settlers also used logs to create protective walls around their settlements.

As the new colonies grew houses tended to be built with braced frame construction where heavy timbers were organized as posts and beams locked together with large wooden pegs using mortise-and-tenon joints. Between these elements the walls could be created with a variety of material such as stone or wood planks.

These types of construction have one thing in common – they were hand-made and built from nearby material. Local woods were used to obtain the timber. Rudimentary forming of tree logs into usable shapes was done by hand on site using axes and a few other simple hand tools.

This is not to say other materials were not used to build houses. Stone was often used for fireplaces and foundations. However, materials for mortar were not readily available in most areas and timber was easier to obtain. Stone houses tended to be built where materials were available and settlers had traditions of building with stone.

Using stone required rough cutting the stone in order to create pieces that fit together well enough to minimize the size of gaps in the wall. These gaps could then be filled with mud or clay bound with straw or horse hair, or with simple mortar where lime deposits or oyster shells were available.

Brick came into use as a building material in the early 17th century, but was primarily used for important buildings such as churches and public buildings, as well as for homes of the wealthy such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia. Brick became more common for housing and commercial buildings in the larger cities due to concerns over urban fires.

Though early houses were built with hand-cut and formed wood, sawmills did develop early. The first mills were built in 1623 near York, Maine, and near New Amsterdam. Early mills were wind powered. However, the first water powered mill was built in 1634 near Berwick, Maine.

These early mills had low output, and many focused on creating masts and boards for shipbuilding. Due to the abundance of large trees, these masts were mostly shipped overseas to Europe, which had deforested most of their large trees.

Technical improvements in milling during the late 1700’s and through the 1800’s would help to keep wood as the predominant building material in the U.S. Such improvements included:

• The circular saw in 1777
• The planing machine in 1791
• Rotary form planing in 1793
• Traverse planer in 1802
• Band saw 1808 in England
• Steam-powered mills in the 1830’s
• Direct drive mills in the 1850’s

This technical development would dramatically increase output capacities of mills, from 500 to 1,500 board feet in a day to 100,000 board feet by 1896.

The development of wood stud framing

This advancement in wood production coincided with two other major events in America: the westward expansion across the continent and the development of the railroads. These two things continued to drive the demand and preference for wood construction through the rest of the 19th century.

Early settlers of the Great Plains in the middle of the continent found almost no natural resources to build homes, other than digging out sod houses. Settlers needed new homes, and the railroads needed to settle the Great Plains to pay for and profit from their westward construction under the government’s railroad land grant incentives.

The technical improvements in sawmills in the mid-1800’s allowed for the creation of uniform wood components. These components were much smaller than traditional timber making these components cost-effective, cheaper to ship on the railroads, and easy to build with.

These components led to the creation of stud framing for houses. Studs are the vertical individual wood components used for construction. These are used to build wall panels that could then be connected to other wall panels to build a house or other building. This method took far less manpower to build than timber framing, adding to the cost-effectiveness of this material.

The most celebrated advancement in house construction is the balloon frame, which was developed in Chicago in 1833. This framing used two-story studs to create the enclosure of a two-story house, with the second floor tied into these walls by horizontal supports cut into the studs. This allowed for rapid construction and cost effectiveness, making homes affordable to the middle class.

Though this framing system is celebrated, a different system came to dominate wood construction for houses: platform framing.

Platform framing uses one-story studs that span from the foundation to the second floor. The second floor framing is then placed on the first floor stud frames and then covered with a subfloor of wood boards or panels, creating a platform on which the second floor is built.

Platform framing allows for a greater number of pieces of the same length being used, making shipping and construction easier. This framing system also allowed for easier compliance with new life safety requirements.

The most applicable safety requirement is for fire blocking between floors. Fire can easily spread upward through walls if not blocked. Since balloon frames are continuous across both floors, additional wood pieces are needed between the studs to create the fire block at the second floor. The second floor platform, however, can act as the fire block.

The ease of creating uniform wood components and shipping brought about one of the most interesting and unique methods of home building in the United States: the catalog house. The most renowned company providing houses by mail order is Sears Roebuck and Company.

Sears started this service in 1908 offering different design models through its catalog service. Someone could easily choose a style, place an order, and send payment to Sears. The company would then ship and deliver all of the components needed to construct the house, from wood for the framing and enclosure, doors, windows, roofing, interior and exterior materials, and even the nails. This service lasted for over three decades.

The growth of housing after World War II

House construction was dramatically reduced due to the Great Depression and World War II. The depression led to financial limitations restricting the ability of people to buy new homes, while the war created large restrictions to the use of building materials in order to use those resources for the war effort.

Two important technical developments occurred prior to the war that would greatly influence house construction after the war.

The development of plywood, created from layers of thin wood veneers adhered to each other with waterproof glue, allows for large sheets of standard sizes that can be used for enclosure of the wood frame, subflooring for the floor framing platform, and for the substrate for roofing materials.

Factory production creates components in a controlled environment with high levels of quality control. Doors and windows are examples of components created this way, allowing for cheaper products of higher quality than can typically be achieved being fabricated on site.

During the war, the Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for building everything needed for the armed forces. They used standardized wood components to quickly build large quantities of buildings in a short amount of time. This method would be used after the war to address the large demand for housing.

Once the war ended and the American economy shifted away from war production, a shortage of housing existed and a large growth in population occurred called the Baby Boom. This growth led to a large demand for housing.

The quick building processes of the Army Corps, along with an admiration of Henry Ford’s assembly line technique, led to the development of America’s iconic suburb: Levittown in New York, developed by William Levitt and his brother Alfred.

To address this need for housing, the Levitt’s built thousands of homes simultaneously, separating the stages of house building into its components, with each component worked on by specialized tradesmen. Each group of tradesmen would work specifically to install their components into a house, with all the materials they needed delivered in sequence. Once they were done with one house they would move on to the next.

The cost effectiveness, ease of shipping, and quick construction provided by wood framing became a primary part of this assembly process. The success of Levittown spread the use of this method of construction for large scale development across the country, taking wood framing with it.

A concern for the woodlands

The rapid rise of using wood for housing, along with being used for firewood, paper production, and numerous other things, led to a significant concern with deforestation by the early twentieth century.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, it is estimated that 46% of the United States was covered by forest. By 1907 forest coverage was estimated to be 33%. Though the 1907 coverage is a far greater percentage than most of Europe, the ever growing rate of deforestation was significant.

To counteract this, reforestation efforts began in earnest in the early 20th century. Led by private groups along with the U.S. forest service, these efforts have been extensive.

Lumber companies that own massive amounts of forest land began reforestation efforts of harvested lands to ensure continued availability of lumber to harvest. Other efforts have led to an additional 19 million acres (7.6 million hectares) of forest area against 950 thousand acres (384 thousand hectares) of deforestation between 1990 and 2010.

This continued availability of forest land, along with the cost effective use of lumber, continues the popularity of wood as the primary means of house construction in the United States.

Sources: The Guardian, “England’s Forests: a Brief History of Trees”; Royal Forestry Service, “A Brief History of British Woodlands”; Farm and Dairy, “The Evolution of the Sawmill Industry”, by Sam Moore; Industrial Workers of the World Historic Archives, “The Lumber Industry and Its Workers”, by James Kennedy; Bismark Tribune, “Western Expansion Equaled Demand for Lumber”, by Lynn Bueling; Owlcation, “What Early American Homes of the First Colonial Settlers Were Like”, by artsofthetimes; SeattlePl, “Rates of Deforestation & Reforestation in the U.S.”, by Andrea Becker; Old Stone Houses, “The Story of Stone and Early American Home Styles”; Real Thin Brick, “History of Bricks in the U.S.”; Renaissance Development, “Do You Know Why Your Historic Home is Made of Brick?”, by Christina Wilson; Wikipedia articles, “History of the Forest in Central Europe”, “Forestry in the United Kingdom”, “Sawmill”, “Sears Modern Homes”, “Framing (Construction)”, “Timber Framing”, “Levitt & Sons”.

Photos are by Cayl Hollis unless noted otherwise.

Top image: Photo by Jaksmata, Wikimedia Commons: www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en