LOAD-BEARING WALL

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A 'load-bearing wall' is one in which a wall of a structure bears the weight and force resting upon it, as opposed to a curtain wall, which uses the strength of a sub-wall and superstructure to carry the weight. The materials most often used to construct load-bearing walls in large buildings are stone, block, or brick.
Load-bearing walls are one of the earliest forms of construction. With the advent of Gothic architecture, and its vast expanses of windows and high vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses were employed to keep the weight of the building properly distributed. Notre Dame Cathedral has a load-bearing wall structure with flying buttresses.
The birth of the skyscraper era, the concurrent rise of steel as a more suitable framing system, and the limitations of load-bearing construction in large buildings led to a decline in the use of load-bearing walls in large-scale, commercial structures.
Depending on the type of building and the number of stories, load-bearing walls are gauged to the appropriate thickness to carry the weight above it. Without doing so, it is possible that an outer wall could become unstable if the load exceeds the strength of the material used, potentially leading to the collapse of the structure.