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Central Ohio houses and bathrooms, era by era

How Central Ohio houses were built, era by era, from the footing to the wall behind the tile

What a Central Ohio house is made of was settled by the decade it went up, and almost none of it was settled in Central Ohio. This page walks a house from the footing to the roof, every date carrying the geography its source covers: national for the materials, Ohio for the code, and the Census Bureau's twelve-state Midwest for the only figures measured by region. The spine is the bathroom wall behind the tile, described three times across seventy years, by a federal handbook in 1955, by a federal rehabilitation guide in 1999, and by the Residential Code of Ohio now. Nothing here measures Central Ohio for a building material, and the page says so.

Last updated September 2026 · Federal rehabilitation guides, National Park Service briefs, Census Bureau new-housing tables, Ohio code rules and the City of Columbus's own design criteria were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

Nothing here measures Central Ohio for a material

There is no survey of what Central Ohio houses are built of. The dates below come from federal documents describing the country, from Ohio's own code, and from one state publication about local stone. The nearest regional measurement is the Census Bureau's Characteristics of New Housing, which reports new single-family houses completed for four regions; Ohio sits in its twelve-state Midwest, so a Midwest share is never a Columbus one.

What is measured locally is only how old the houses are, and those shares sit on the lead paint and asbestos page; the fixtures in the bathroom whose walls this page describes are on the bathroom styles and fixtures page. One fact from the page about who shaped these houses explains much of what follows: the Ohio Board of Building Standards records that the state legislature specifically exempted one-, two- and three-family dwellings from the state building code, and Ohio's separate residential code carries May 27, 2006 as its earliest prior effective date.

The table is that series: what was built new in a given year, not what stands here now.

What the Census Bureau countsFirst yearIn 2025The catch
Full or partial basement72 percent in 197150 percentNationally 36 percent, then 16.
Wood, primary wall material43 percent in 197316 percentOne material per house.
Brick, primary wall material23 percent in 19734 percentNot brick added later.
Vinyl sidingNot counted alone to 199264 percentAlready 41 percent in 1992.
Fiber cement sidingNot counted alone to 200512 percentTwo definitions across 2005.
Forced-air furnace75 percent in 197388 percentHeat pumps peaked at 21 percent in 2010.
Central air conditioning35 percent in 197396 percentRoom units excluded.

Foundations, and why a basement is the regional habit

Most houses with basements built in the twentieth century have concrete basement floor slabs, typically four inches thick, on the federal rehabilitation guide's account. Nothing read here dates concrete block or poured concrete foundation walls in ordinary houses, so no such date is printed; the nearest is the National Park Service's, which puts a much greater acceptance of concrete after 1900, following the rotary kiln Ernest Ransome introduced to United States cement production.

How deep a footing goes is where a local rule appears. Section 403.1.4 of the Residential Code of Ohio requires an exterior footing not less than 12 inches below the undisturbed ground surface and separately requires frost protection, the first of its four methods being to extend below the frost line in the climatic design table. Ohio leaves that column for each jurisdiction to fill in, as the supply pipes page records. The City of Columbus fills it in at 32 inches, with a ground snow load of 20 pounds per square foot and seismic design category B; the severe weathering classification the city's communication also carries is the state's, printed in the code's own table for all of Ohio. The 32 inches is the city's figure for Columbus; a neighboring township may publish a different depth. What the rest of that climatic design table carries for wind, weathering, termites, ice and flood is on the page about what goes wrong in a Central Ohio house.

The frame, and what may be cut in it

Platform framing, a deck for each story, arrived earlier than the usual telling, and two federal sources agree. The rehabilitation guide says balloon framing, whose studs ran in one piece from foundation to roof, had largely been replaced by the beginning of the Second World War, and the Agriculture Department's 1955 house-building handbook already calls the platform method the more general one.

The stud changed size too. The standards agency records Commerce Department work producing Simplified Practice Recommendation R 16 in 1924 and the 1970 edition establishing separate sizes for dry and green lumber; two federal agencies print different revision years in between, so this page prints 1924 and 1970 and nothing between. The Forest Products Laboratory's own 1964 history records the change a homeowner can feel: in December 1961 the industry's grade committee agreed to leave the widths alone and cut the standard dry thickness of two-inch lumber from one and five eighths of an inch to one and a half. Both agencies give the modern figure, a dry nominal two-by-four surfaced to one and a half by three and a half inches, which is why a new stud beside an old one does not sit flush.

What may be cut out of that stud is Ohio's business. Section 602.6 of the Residential Code of Ohio allows a notch of no more than 25 percent of the width of a stud in an exterior wall or bearing partition and 40 percent in a nonbearing partition; a bored hole may take up to 60 percent and must stay five eighths of an inch from the edge. That is the wall counterpart of the joist rule on the floors and subfloors page, and between them they decide whether a valve or a drain can move.

The outside wall, era by era

Sheathing first. Until the middle of the 1960s, the rehabilitation guide says of the country as a whole, the dominant wall sheathing was one-by-three and one-by-four boards, usually nailed diagonally to the studs. That is a wall date, not a floor date: the same agency puts plywood in floors much earlier, which the floors page records, and in roof sheathing since the middle of the 1950s. Oriented strand board arrived as sheathing in the early 1980s.

Then the cladding, all of it national. Vinyl siding was introduced in the 1960s and by 1999 the same guide called it the leading wall cladding material. Fiber cement siding in its present form was introduced in the late 1980s; its older lookalike, asbestos-cement siding, ran through much of the twentieth century until the use of asbestos was discontinued in the 1970s, and handling it belongs to the lead paint and asbestos page. The Park Service's own 1984 brief on aluminum and vinyl siding is recorded on its index as rescinded in October 2023, so nothing here rests on it.

The inside wall, and the plaster that came first

Two federal agencies date this differently and both dates are useful. The National Park Service says plaster was the wall surface chosen for nearly all buildings until the 1930s or 1940s; the rehabilitation guide says the dominant wall material has been plaster or, since the 1960s, gypsum board. The gap between them is where the rock-lath-and-plaster houses of the 1940s and 1950s sit.

Under the plaster is the lath, and the Park Service dates all three kinds. Metal lath was patented in England in 1797 and used in parts of the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century. Rock lath, compressed gypsum with a paper facing, was in use as early as 1900 and by the late 1930s was used almost exclusively in residential plastering. The plaster changed with its base: lime plaster until the end of the nineteenth century, gypsum from around 1900. Nothing read here dates gypsum wallboard's invention or arrival, so no such date appears.

The wall behind the tile, in 1955, in 1999, and now

Three documents seventy years apart answer the question asked most about an older Central Ohio bathroom. Ohio prints its residential code sections without the model code's R prefix, so the numbers below read 702.3.7 and 702.4.2.

1955: metal lath, felt and a cement scratch coat

The Agriculture Department's Wood-Frame House Construction, published in February 1955, describes the tiled tub recess as it was then built. Expanded metal lath was applied around the recess over a paper backing. The studs were covered with 15-pound asphalt-saturated felt laid shingle style. The scratch coat was portland cement plaster, at least five eighths of an inch thick, integrally waterproofed and thoroughly roughened, and it had to be dry before the ceramic tile went on. This page prints it as the method described in 1955; nothing read here dates the year it stopped being recommended, so no end date is given. The National Park Service records the tile of that period as larger rectangular white glazed tiles for bathroom walls and wainscots, with colored tile also popular in bathrooms.

1999: green board against cement backer board

By the end of the century the wall was board rather than plaster, and the rehabilitation guide's kitchens and baths volume of September 1999 is blunt about what that means. Small amounts of water get through the tile in a shower or tub surround, it says, so what is behind it has to dry before it saturates. Even water-resistant green board will not dry out as quickly as cement-based backer board, and for rehabilitation work the guide tells the reader to use cement-based backer board.

Now: what Ohio permits behind wall tile

Ohio's rule is more precise than the argument usually is, and the precision is the value. The Residential Code of Ohio does not ban water-resistant gypsum board from a bathroom. Section 702.3.7.1 writes the limit as a condition rather than a room: it shall not be used where there will be direct exposure to water, or in areas subject to continuous high humidity. Section 702.3.7 permits it on ceilings, requires cut or exposed edges to be sealed as the manufacturer recommends, and says it shall not be installed over a Class I or II vapor retarder in a shower or tub compartment. That clause bites here rather than staying hypothetical, because section 702.7 requires a Class I or II vapor retarder on the interior side of frame walls in climate zone 5, and Ohio puts the Central Ohio counties in zone 5, as the hot water page records.

What may go behind wall tile in a tub or shower is a short list. Section 702.4.2 requires backers for wall tile in tub and shower areas, and wall panels in shower areas, to be one of four materials named in Table 702.4.2: glass mat gypsum backing panel, fiber-reinforced gypsum panels, nonasbestos fiber-cement backer board, and nonasbestos fiber mat-reinforced cementitious backer units. Ordinary water-resistant gypsum board is not among the four.

A modern tiled shower on a waterproof membrane is a different assembly again, and the Tile Council of North America says its Handbook does not name the backing for it, leaving the choice of a suitable membrane and backer board combination to the manufacturers and the design professional. What that assembly looks like built is on the custom tile shower page, and what the finished surface of a shower wall must be belongs to the Ohio code page.

Roofs, windows and the energy table

Two federal sources agree on when asphalt shingles arrived and neither dates the point at which they took over: the National Park Service says asphalt shingles and roll roofing were used in the 1890s, and the rehabilitation guide says they entered the roofing market in the late 1800s, with organic cellulose mats from the early 1940s to the late 1970s and inorganic fiberglass dominant since. Roof sheathing before the 1950s is typically one-inch boards, the same volume says, and plywood, particleboard or oriented strand board since the middle of that decade.

Windows are the thinnest part of this page, and the reason is worth stating: the rehabilitation guide's windows and doors volume is a scan with no readable text, and nothing read here dates aluminum windows, vinyl windows or insulating glass. Insulating glass, glass block and low-emissivity coatings are each dated on the page on windows and glass in a Central Ohio house. What exists is the current rule. Table 1102.1.2 of the Residential Code of Ohio sets what a new house in the state's climate zone 5 must reach: a maximum window U-factor of 0.30, ceiling insulation at R-49, a wood frame wall at R-20 or at R-13 plus R-5 continuous, a floor at R-30, and a basement wall at R-10 continuous or R-13 in the cavity. When that energy chapter first took effect, later than Ohio's other mechanical rules, is set out on the heating page.

Insulation, heat and the air conditioner

Insulation was an ordinary product by 1955. The Agriculture Department's handbook of that year describes blanket and batt insulation of wood or vegetable fibers or mineral wool, and poured or blown fill used in the side walls of existing houses that had not been insulated when built. Adding it to an old wall is not a simple improvement: the National Park Service says an uninsulated old wood building leaks more air than a modern one, which makes it less efficient but helps dry the wall out, and that the effect of adding insulation to a wood-frame wall is hard to predict. Existing moisture problems come first, and where bathroom moisture is supposed to go is on the bathroom electrical page.

Heat came before the insulation did. The rehabilitation guide dates gas in houses to the middle of the 1880s, lighting and cooking first and space and water heating later, and says that as electricity reached houses forced-air systems replaced most of the gravity systems that had moved heated air by natural convection. In the Census Bureau's regional series, 75 percent of new single-family houses completed in the Midwest in 1973 had a forced-air furnace and 88 percent did in 2025; central air conditioning went from 35 percent of those houses to 96, against 49 and 98 percent for the country. The Bureau counts central air conditioning and excludes room units, so anything older got its cooling added afterward, often through the same joist bays a bathroom wants.

What was made nearby

The one Central Ohio material claim here is geological. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Geological Survey says the Devonian-age Columbus and Delaware Limestones were used extensively for home building in central Ohio in the early 1800s, and that the Ohio Statehouse, completed in 1861, extensively used Columbus Limestone. Insulation has an Ohio address too: Owens Corning's own annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission for 2025 says the company was founded in 1938 and is based in Toledo, Ohio.

Tile was an Ohio industry, in Zanesville to the east. The National Park Service says that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century Zanesville, Ohio was the largest center for pottery and tile-making in the world, and that the American Encaustic Tiling Company, established there in 1876, was the largest tile company in the world in the early 1930s before closing about 1935; the same brief names the Mosaic Tile Company among the makers there. Both superlatives are the Park Service's own words, and no source read here follows a tile from Zanesville into a Columbus bathroom. Which houses belong to which era is the house styles page.

The short version. Almost every date here is national, because nobody measures Central Ohio for a building material. Behind old bathroom tile, in the 1955 federal handbook's words, sits expanded metal lath over felt and a portland cement scratch coat. Behind new tile, under the Residential Code of Ohio, sits one of four named backer materials, and water-resistant gypsum board is not one of them.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

Common questions

Why do so many Central Ohio houses have a basement?

A basement is a regional habit rather than a national one, and the Census Bureau's Characteristics of New Housing shows it. Of new single-family houses completed in its twelve-state Midwest region, which contains Ohio, 72 percent had a full or partial basement in 1971 and 50 percent did in 2025, against 36 percent and 16 percent for the country in those same two years. The South was at 4 percent in 2025. The Bureau measures new construction by region rather than by city, so that is a Midwest figure and not a Columbus one, and nobody publishes a count of basements under Central Ohio houses.

How deep is the frost line in Columbus, Ohio?

The City of Columbus publishes a frost line depth of 32 inches. It sits in its building department's Construction Industry Communication number 09, which fills in the climatic and geographic design criteria the Residential Code of Ohio leaves to each jurisdiction, alongside a ground snow load of 20 pounds per square foot and seismic design category B; the severe weathering classification printed beside them is the state's, set for all of Ohio in the code's own table. Ohio's own code, at section 403.1.4, requires an exterior footing at least 12 inches below the undisturbed ground surface and separately requires frost protection. A neighboring township or city may publish a different depth.

What is behind the tile in a 1950s Ohio bathroom?

The federal handbook that described house building in 1955 sets it out. Expanded metal lath went around the tub recess over a paper backing, the studs were covered with 15-pound asphalt-saturated felt laid shingle style, and the scratch coat was portland cement plaster at least five eighths of an inch thick, integrally waterproofed and left to dry before the tile went on. That is the method described in 1955, and nothing read for this page dates the year it stopped being recommended. A wall of that period may instead be plaster on rock lath, which the National Park Service says was used almost exclusively in residential plastering by the late 1930s.

Can green board be used behind shower tile under Ohio's code?

Not as the backer for the tile. The Residential Code of Ohio requires backers for wall tile in tub and shower areas to be one of four materials named in Table 702.4.2: glass mat gypsum backing panel, fiber-reinforced gypsum panels, nonasbestos fiber-cement backer board, and nonasbestos fiber mat-reinforced cementitious backer units. Water-resistant gypsum board, the green board of the trade, is not one of them. The code does not bar it from a bathroom outright: section 702.3.7.1 bars it where there will be direct exposure to water or in areas subject to continuous high humidity, and section 702.3.7 permits it on ceilings while barring it over a Class I or II vapor retarder in a shower or tub compartment.

When did plywood sheathing and platform framing arrive in American houses?

Both are earlier than the usual telling, and both dates are national rather than local. The federal rehabilitation guide says balloon framing had largely been replaced by platform framing by the beginning of the Second World War, and the Agriculture Department's 1955 handbook already treats the platform method as the more general one. Plywood reached different parts of the house at different times, on the same agency's account: roof sheathing in houses built since the middle of the 1950s, and wall sheathing from the middle of the 1960s, before which the dominant wall sheathing was one-by-three and one-by-four boards nailed diagonally. Oriented strand board followed in the early 1980s.

Why is a two-by-four in an old house thicker than a new one?

Because the standard changed. The Forest Products Laboratory's own 1964 history of the lumber size standard records that under the 1953 standard green and dry lumber could be dressed to the same sizes, and that in December 1961 the industry's grade committee agreed to leave the widths alone and cut the standard dry thickness of two-inch lumber from one and five eighths of an inch to one and a half. Separate dry and green sizes reached the federal standard with its 1970 edition. Today both that laboratory and the standards agency give a dry nominal two-by-four as surfaced to one and a half by three and a half inches.

What does Ohio's code allow to be cut out of a wall stud?

Section 602.6 of the Residential Code of Ohio sets the limits. A notch may take no more than 25 percent of the width of a stud in an exterior wall or bearing partition, and no more than 40 percent in a nonbearing partition. A bored hole may take up to 60 percent, must stay five eighths of an inch from the edge, and may not fall in the same place as a notch. A stud bored past 40 percent in a bearing wall must be doubled, and no more than two successive doubled studs may be bored. Where piping cuts more than half a top plate, section 602.6.1 requires a galvanized metal tie across the opening.

What were new Midwest houses clad in during the 1970s, and what are they clad in now?

The Census Bureau's Characteristics of New Housing reports the primary exterior wall material of new single-family houses completed, for the country and for four regions. In its twelve-state Midwest region, which contains Ohio, 43 percent had wood as the primary material in 1973 and 23 percent had brick. In 2025 the same series put vinyl siding at 64 percent, wood at 16 percent, fiber cement at 12 percent and brick at 4 percent. Two categories have definitional breaks: vinyl was not reported on its own until 1992 and fiber cement not until 2005, so a comparison across those years compares two definitions.

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