The prevalence of wooden houses in New Zealand, and the recent deforestation here is another good example of this – in the 100 or so years from the early 1800’s to the early 20th C over 90% of the North Island’s estimated 12,000 sq kilometers of kauriforests were cut / destroyed, and while much was burnt or exported large quantities of the wood was used locally in both ship- and house-building; many of the Auckland villa style houses from the late 19th / early 20th century use kauri throughout, being an ideal wood for both framing and exposed / polished surfaces. It’s a beautiful golden colour. (Photo of exterior of typical villa – not sure if the word means the same in US).
Once the kauri was (largely) gone other woods were used. My 50 year old house is largely built from rimu, another versatile wood, although not as strong as kauri. (Personally I prefer the look of rimu, a lovely warm red-gold colour).
These days those woods are only used for polished trim or special furniture, and often recycled from demolished dwellings, and the framing is radiata pine from the large planted / managed /sustainable forests, with the exterior cladding likely to be fiber cement siding, or some other un-wood-like substance.
In scandinavia a lot (probably most) houses are built of wood. Lots of timber and space. In town wood is still common, but there are more concrete/brick/stone houses. Many of the larger towns have been completely destroyed by fire at least once, and places like Stockholm and Sundsvall are fairly typical in that the historic centre is made up of old stone buildings, largely due to old fire regulations
Another way to look at this is: a shortage of cheap stone in the US.
Europe has salvaged a lot of building stone from old buildings, some hundreds or even thousands of years old.
Over the centuries, the labor necessary to cut stone has been conserved in stone that has already been cut.
When we arrived in North America, there wasn’t much in the way of stone buildings.
Oh, a few. But not a lot.
Cutting stone takes lots of time & labor. And for the first 300 years or so (post-Pilgrims), labor was always rather scarce in contrast to the need.
We used wood because it was, simply, less labor intensive. You folks used stone, in part, because your ancestors never hesitated to rip up olds Gothic churches or Roman ruins to build a stone cowbarn.
I can see the Austrians’ point, but the thing is, this still wouldn’t explain why most houses in Latin America are not timber, or why a “good house” in Latin America is not timber (I have seen houses made of wooden planks, but calling them “houses” is polite - they were solid only by comparison with the metal planks house across the road). The difference in the availability of good timber is definitely a factor.
I’m not sure about it being easier to train someone to work wood than brick, though. Building a single-storey brick house doesn’t require a lot in the way of big beams.
Wood reacts well to earthquakes, if constructed correctly.
The house my parents designed and built is all-wood construction (Built in 1978), and it has endured dozens of respectable quakes and more than a few big quakes.
Just a little nitpick, but related to the OP: “stick built” is only a subset of wood frame houses, referring to the modern method of framing using lots of small (2x4 and slightly larger) pieces. As opposed to old-school “post and beam” using fewer but massive timbers. The switch happened generally in the middle of the 1800s in the U.S. The big reason was the shortage of massive timbers (both because all the big old trees in the east had been cut down, and because there weren’t a whole lot of big trees to begin with in the midwest plains where people were now settling).
At least in Houston, Galveston, Austin, Dallas, College Station, those cities’ surrounding areas and everywhere else I’ve been, the houses are primarily wood framed, with a brick veneer (i.e. brick outer walls that are not structural).
Almost ALL new construction in those areas I mention is and has been like that since the 1950s.
I think it depends on where in the US you’re building the house. In the northern half of the nation, wood is plentiful. Out in the desert, not so much.
In San Francisco, any building that survived the 1906 earthquake is celebrated and fairly rare.
As a side note, documenting anything older than 1906 is a challenge as the city records were lost in the fires following the quake. IIRC, about all there is to go with is water company records of when water or sewer lines were connected, and survey maps done by a fire insurance company.
