page_title: Framing (construction)
section_title: Balloon framing
hierarchical_section_title: Framing (construction) / Balloon framing
caption_attribution_description: Interior shot of the Jim Kaney Round Barn found on Bluff Road, Maryland Township, Adeline, Ogle County, Illinois, USA.
context_page_description: Framing, in construction, is the fitting together of pieces to give a structure support and shape. Framing materials are usually wood, engineered wood, or structural steel. The alternative to framed construction is generally called mass wall construction, where horizontal layers of stacked materials such as log building, masonry, rammed earth, adobe, etc. are used without framing.
  Building framing is divided into two broad categories, heavy-frame construction if the vertical supports are few and heavy such as in timber framing, pole building framing, or steel framing; or light-frame construction if the supports are more numerous and smaller, such as balloon, platform, or light-steel framing. Light-frame construction using standardized dimensional lumber has become the dominant construction method in North America and Australia due to the economy of the method; use of minimal structural material allows builders to enclose a large area at minimal cost while achieving a wide variety of architectural styles.
  Modern light-frame structures usually gain strength from rigid panels, but until recently carpenters employed various forms of diagonal bracing to stabilize walls.
context_section_description: Balloon framing is a method of wood construction –  also known as "Chicago construction" in the 19th century  –  used primarily in areas rich in softwood forests: Scandinavia, Canada, the United States up until the mid-1950s, and around Thetford Forest in Norfolk, England. It uses long continuous framing members (studs) that run from the  sill plate to the top plate, with intermediate floor structures let into and nailed to them.  Here the heights of window sills, headers and next floor height would be marked out on the studs with a story pole. Once popular when long lumber was plentiful, balloon framing has been largely replaced by platform framing.
  It is not certain who introduced balloon framing in the United States. However, the first building using balloon framing was possibly a warehouse constructed in 1832 in Chicago, Illinois, by George Washington Snow. Architectural critic Sigfried Giedion cited Chicago architect John M. Van Osdel's 1880s attribution, as well as A. T. Andreas' 1885 History of Chicago, to credit Snow as 'inventor of the balloon frame method'. In 1833, Augustine Taylor (1796–1891) constructed St. Mary's Catholic Church in Chicago using the balloon framing method. 
  In the 1830s, Hoosier Solon Robinson published articles about a revolutionary new framing system, called "balloon framing" by later builders. Robinson's system called for standard 2x4 lumber, nailed together to form a sturdy, light skeleton. Builders were reluctant to adopt the new technology, however, by the 1880s, some form of 2x4 framing was standard.
  Alternatively, a precursor to the balloon frame may have been used by the French in Missouri as much as thirty-one years earlier.
  The name comes from a French Missouri type of construction, maison en boulin, boulin being a French term for a horizontal scaffolding support. Historians have also fabricated the following story: As Taylor was constructing his first such building, St. Mary's Church, in 1833, skilled carpenters looked on at the comparatively thin framing members, all held together with nails, and declared this method of construction to be no more substantial than a balloon. It would surely blow over in the next wind! Though the criticism proved baseless, the name stuck.
  Although lumber was plentiful in 19th-century America, skilled labor was not. The advent of cheap machine-made nails, along with water-powered sawmills in the early 19th century made balloon framing highly attractive, because it did not require highly skilled carpenters, as did the dovetail joints, mortises and tenons required by post-and-beam construction. For the first time, any farmer could build his own buildings without a time-consuming learning curve.
  It has been said that balloon framing populated the western United States and the western provinces of Canada. Without it, western boomtowns certainly could not have blossomed overnight. It is also likely that, by radically reducing construction costs, balloon framing improved the shelter options of poorer North Americans. For example, many 19th-century New England working neighborhoods consist of balloon-constructed three-story apartment buildings referred to as triple deckers.  However, balloon framing did require very long studs and as tall trees were exhausted in the 1920s, platform framing became prevalent.
  The main difference between platform and balloon framing is at the floor lines. The balloon wall studs extend from the sill of the first story all the way to the top plate or end rafter of the second story. The platform-framed wall, on the other hand, is independent for each floor.
caption: An unusual example of balloon framing: The Jim Kaney Round Barn, Adeline, Illinois, U.S.A.
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