Instead of heavy timbers cut with mortise-and-tenon joints by skilled carpenters, the balloon frame uses many light, machine-sawn studs and joists of standard section, nailed together, with continuous studs running from sill to eaves. It depends on two industrial products: cheap sawn dimensional lumber and cheap machine-made nails. A warehouse built by George Washington Snow in Chicago in 1832 is usually cited as the first example, followed by Augustine Taylor's St Mary's Church in 1833. Two semi-skilled workers could raise a house in days, and kits could be shipped by rail to treeless prairie towns.
The balloon frame made the detached single-family house a mass-produced commodity, and so made the American subdivision economically possible: survey the lots, sell them, and the buildings follow at speed. It underwrote the explosive growth of Chicago and the platting of thousands of grid towns across the Midwest, and its descendant, the platform frame, still builds most North American housing. Its fire risk also shaped building codes after the great city fires of the 1870s.
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