A Brief History on the Building Code
The first pseudo–building code is often attributed to King Hammurabi, ruler of Babylon, written around 1750 BCE. The Code of Hammurabi is known for its “eye-for-an-eye” style of justice, and it included several provisions related to construction. Most famously, it stated that a builder could be put to death if a house he constructed collapsed and killed the owner. While grim and archaic, this early rule illustrates a central purpose of building codes: to establish minimum standards of construction quality to safeguard public health, safety, and welfare.
Regulations continued to evolve across ancient civilizations — from Egypt to Greece to Rome — as societies grew and urban populations densified. It soon became clear that structural collapse was only one of many hazards that building regulations needed to address. After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE, Emperor Nero (not the greatest guy who ever lived) introduced new urban planning rules that regulated street width and building heights and required wider use of fire-resistant construction materials, such as masonry and concrete. These reforms represent some of the earliest known attempts to control fire spread through material and urban design requirements.
Fast-forward to the Great Fire of London in 1666, which led authorities to require brick and stone construction in place of the highly flammable timber common at the time. Even earlier, the first American building regulations appeared in the early 1600s, primarily addressing fire safety. In 1630, for example, Boston banned wooden chimneys and thatched roofs (seems like a good rule to me). In the late 1770s, George Washington recommended height and area limitations for wood-framed buildings in his plans for the new capital city, Washington DC. By the early 1800s, major U.S. cities began establishing formal building codes, often motivated and financially supported by insurance companies burdened by enormous fire-related losses.
The early 1900s marked the beginning of modern building codes as we know them. As cities industrialized, local codes gradually consolidated into regional model codes. Three major code organizations emerged in the United States:
Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) for the Eastern and Midwestern states
International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO) in the West
Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI) in the South
Another major consolidation occurred in 2000 with the formation of the International Code Council (ICC), which unified BOCA, ICBO, and SBCCI into a single national model-code body. That same year, the ICC published the first International Building Code (IBC), creating a comprehensive, consensus-based model code now used throughout the United States and adopted, often with local modifications, by jurisdictions around the world. Today, the IBC serves as the primary reference for structural design, fire safety, accessibility, and material standards.