- arcaded block commercial building: From the last quarter of the 19th century right down to the present, much attention has been paid to the corner commercial building, particularly one marking the edge or the heart of a business district. The arcaded block was just such a building. It was intended to be an imposing building with a strong overall shape, solid massing, and firm lines on both its elevations. It was rarely uniform in size, for one elevation was often larger than the other, and one might have been designed somewhat differently from the other. As a corner property, the arcaded business block had a rich design vocabulary stemming from the history of business-block development after the Civil War and the introduction of a new sensibility. High-style architects such as H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan had demonstrated how an elevation could be integrated through the use of arches, round-headed elements, or arcades. The curvilinear elements were usually linked, which helped to break the wall away from domination by vertical bays. The new look presented windows in bands or clusters of light. This kind of design often gave a lighter feeling to portions of the wall and at the same time focused the design on the intersection of the walls. That corner often culminated in a tower that rose from a recessed or canted ground-level entrance…
- artistic-front commercial building: As neighborhoods became settled and filled up with cottages, bungalows, and multifamily buildings, the increase in population and automobiles gave rise to a new kind of secondary business district. It was located within walking distance or within mass transit connections of a neighborhood or on the boundary between two neighborhoods where access by car was necessary. This kind of enterprise was a grouping of stores that offered a wide variety of goods and services. The stores were usually physically connected, so that utilities and facade treatments could be integrated. The major period for this development seems to have been the 1920s, although there were examples of shopping areas built before and long after that decade. They were referred to as artistic designs, based on their unusual appearances, which derived from the use of architectural details as attention-getting devices…
- boomtown architecture: Architecture characteristic of frontier towns that were built quickly. A typical feature is the false front which conceals a more modest structure.
- bourse: In French, a building or room used for the meeting of persons who deal in merchandise of any sort; a merchants’ exchange. In modern usage, more commonly limited to the business of buying and selling of public securities, stocks, and bonds, and in this sense adopted by the Continental nations under the forms of Boerse in German, Borsa in Italian, etc., or in the unaltered French form….
- brick-front commercial building: The brick-front store was built as a building or in groups with party walls up to a block in length. In vernacular design, it was the most popular storefront for the longest time. Such buildings varied in height from one to three stories, but their plans were quite similar. Two- and three-story structures had ground-level store facilities, with storage or an apartment living space on the second or third floor. Access was from the street through a separate entrance or through the store. Single-story buildings offered no space for store owners or renters to live in, and they were not often built alone, but rather as a series of stores along a portion of a block tied together by cornices or other horizontal elements…
- business block: British in origin. A business building with a pronounced design that was referred to by its proper name.
- commercial building: Commercial building prototypes did not change basic organization and design until modern materials and design encouraged the change. One modern building was the double-width storefront, which has been labeled the modern broad-front. This building was both a neighborhood and a central business district building, although in the business districts it was frequently built on a side street. The broad-front embraced two stores or one wide store within one span. Steel beams and columns made this possible. It was most often a low one-story structure that could be twice as deep as it was wide…
- continuous business block: From the last quarter of the 19th century right down to the present, much attention has been paid to the corner commercial building, particularly one marking the edge or the heart of a business district. The arcaded block was just such a building. It was intended to be an imposing building with a strong overall shape, solid massing, and firm lines on both its elevations. It was rarely uniform in size, for one elevation was often larger than the other, and one might have been designed somewhat differently from the other. As a corner property, the arcaded business block had a rich design vocabulary stemming from the history of business-block development after the Civil War and the introduction of a new sensibility. High-style architects such as H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan had demonstrated how an elevation could be integrated through the use of arches, round-headed elements, or arcades. The curvilinear elements were usually linked, which helped to break the wall away from domination by vertical bays. The new look presented windows in bands or clusters of light. This kind of design often gave a lighter feeling to portions of the wall and at the same time focused the design on the intersection of the walls. That corner often culminated in a tower that rose from a recessed or canted ground-level entrance…
- corner business block: As a corner property, the arcaded business block had a rich design vocabulary stemming from the history of business-block development after the Civil War and the introduction of a new sensibility. High-style architects such as H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan had demonstrated how an elevation could be integrated through the use of arches, round-headed elements, or arcades. The curvilinear elements were usually linked, which helped to break the wall away from domination by vertical bays. The new look presented windows in bands or clusters of light. This kind of design often gave a lighter feeling to portions of the wall and at the same time focused the design on the intersection of the walls. That corner often culminated in a tower that rose from a recessed or canted ground-level entrance…
- corner commercial building: As a corner property, the arcaded business block had a rich design vocabulary stemming from the history of business-block development after the Civil War and the introduction of a new sensibility. High-style architects such as H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan had demonstrated how an elevation could be integrated through the use of arches, round-headed elements, or arcades. The curvilinear elements were usually linked, which helped to break the wall away from domination by vertical bays. The new look presented windows in bands or clusters of light. This kind of design often gave a lighter feeling to portions of the wall and at the same time focused the design on the intersection of the walls. That corner often culminated in a tower that rose from a recessed or canted ground-level entrance…
- diner: A restaurant dedicated to light meals and short-order cooking.
- drugstore: A term used to describe styles such as Art Deco and Art Moderne.
- exchange: A public building used principally as a place of meeting for merchants or other business men (compare bourse)…
- false-front commercial building: The false-front commercial building has been associated with the settlement of the west, but false-front buildings were in fact built in upstate New York as well as in Iowa, Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming. The false-front has been associated with stores, and there is no doubt that the one- and two-story storefront is the most common of extant vernacular commercial buildings. This kind of building was used for services, small hotels, and as a meeting hall for social and fraternal organizations…
- gable-front commercial building: While a good number of commercial building types have been designated for urban settings, the gable-front store was most often a small-town or rural building. This frame structure, usually clad in clapboard, served as a general store, hardware or small implements store, grocery, or feed store. Some gable-front stores were used like brick-fronts, the upper level providing living space for the owner…
- general store: Commonly a gable front structure in a small-town or rural setting.
- grocery store: Commonly a gable front structure in a small-town or rural setting.
- hardware store: Commonly a gable front structure in a small-town or rural setting.
- iron-front commercial building: The iron-front store was built in all geographical areas, the technology needed to produce iron architectural materials being almost as transportable as the materials. The mold makers had a predilection for classical details, so that most iron-front stores have at least a pair of plain pilasters at the corners or a set of stacked half columns with an entablature. Ironwork was integrated with pressed or stamped tinwork. While the iron posts and beams framed the facade, tin pieces were used for lintels or surrounds around the windows and for the large, bracketed, molding-heavy cornice. All metal pieces were painted to prevent rust…
- Italianate commercial building: In the Italianate storefront popular during the 1870s and 1880s, the window treatment (which included the shape and size of the window and the lintel or sill), the cornice line, and the corners of the building offered the most opportunities for detail from the limited design possibilities. Windows were generally long and narrow, and lintels and sills were of metal, brick, stone, or cement. Lintels were visually heavy units, segmented or rounded. Metal pieces had ornamented surfaces. The cornice was most often metal and had an entablature organization—architrave, frieze, and cornice—with heavy brackets at the corners and lighter, perhaps paired, brackets across the cornice. Façade designs that divided the first floor from the second had an ornamented beam or surface moldings that capped the display windows. The corners of buildings could be quoined in brick or stone, or pilasters or half columns might mark the edges and frame the lower level. It was also common to stack the upright elements on top of one another…
- kneipe: In German, popular usage, a tavern; but in student slang, much influencing common usage, a drinking room, the term being connected more or less closely with ideas of comparative freedom of restraint and perhaps excess. The word kneiperei means the resorting to such a room for drinking and festivity.
- mall: A place for walking and taking the air…
- merchants’ hall: A building or large room for the use of the merchants of a town, as is the great halls of the Middle Ages.
- modern broad-front: Commercial building prototypes did not change basic organization and design until modern materials and design encouraged the change. One modern building was the double-width storefront, which has been labeled the modern broad-front. This building was both a neighborhood and a central business district building, although in the business districts it was frequently built on a side street. The broad-front embraced two stores or one wide store within one span. Steel beams and columns made this possible. It was most often a low one-story structure that could be twice as deep as it was wide…
- neighborhood commercial district: A neighborhood business district.
- pharmacy: A building or room for the compounding and dispensing of drugs.
- Romanesque commercial building: The Romanesque commercial style was not as widespread as the Italianate. Nor was the style so easily accomplished in vernacular building, since it was often combined with what is now called Queen Anne detailing. The Romanesque was a picturesque mode of expression. At its most ambitious level, the vernacular Romanesque used coursed, rock-faced sandstone blocks with round-arch windows and a low, wide, arched entrance. Emphasis was on surface texture and the rhythm of the arches or arcades…
- secondary business district: A business district outside of the central business district.
- shopping-arcade: Covered walkway, usually top-lit, either by means of a clerestory or with a glazed roof, with shops on one or both sides, called an arcade. It is derived from the Islamic bazaar…
- shopping-centre: Group of retail facilities in one complex…
- shopping-mall: Pedestrianized walkway lined by shops, etc., in a shopping-center. 2. Equivalent of the suburban (or ‘out-of-town’) shopping-center, but situated within a town or city, associated with an established commercial center…
- stand: A structure, usually temporary, or at least slight and unarchitectural, as a booth for a shopkeeper; a platform for speakers; an arrangement of seats for an out-of-door exhibition of some kind, as a race or a ball game.
- storehouse: A building used for the storage of goods; the general term.
- Two-Part Block style: The two-part block is the most common form for small and moderate-sized commercial buildings in the United States. This type of building is generally limited to two to four stories, and is characterized by a horizontal division into two distinct zones. The two-part division of the exterior zones typically reflects differences in its interior use. The street level indicates public spaces for commercial enterprises, while the upper section suggests more private spaces reserved for offices, meeting halls or apartments.
Also see Architecture Type index.
Also see Architecture index.