Enframed Window Wall
The enframed window wall reflects an effort to give greater order to the facade composition of small and moderate-sized commercial buildings, a goal that became pronounced around the turn of the 20th century. Popular through the 1940s, the type is visually unified by enframing the large center section with a wide and often continuous border, which is treated as a single compositional unit. For surrounds that enframe a facade of one, two or three stories, the width of a front is usually at least twice as great as most individual bays of the one- and two-part commercial block. When the enframed window wall pattern is used on taller buildings, the overall width tends to be less. Examples can be found more frequently in urban business centers than in small towns. (Longstreth, 1987, 2000)