Western false front architecture or false front commercial architecture is a type of commercial architecture used in the

Old West The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...

of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Often used on two-story buildings, the style includes a vertical facade with a square top, often hiding a

gable roof A gable roof is a roof consisting of two sections whose upper horizontal edges meet to form its ridge. The most common roof shape in cold or temperate climates, it is constructed of rafters, roof trusses or purlins. The pitch of a gable roof ...

. The goal for the architecture is to project an image of stability and success, while in fact a business owner may not have invested much in a building that might be temporary. Four defining characteristics have been suggested: * the front façade of the building "rises to form a parapet (upper wall) which hides most or nearly all of the roof" * the roof "is almost always a front gable, though

gambrel A gambrel or gambrel roof is a usually symmetrical two-sided roof with two slopes on each side. (The usual architectural term in eighteenth-century England and North America was "Dutch roof".) The upper slope is positioned at a shallow angle, ...

and

bowed Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound. Despite the numerous specialist studies devoted to t ...

roofs are occasionally found" * "a better grade of materials is often used on the façade than on the sides or rear of the building" and * "the façade exhibits greater ornamentation than do the other sides of the building." The

N. P. Smith Pioneer Hardware Store The N. P. Smith Pioneer Hardware Store is a historic commercial building in Bend, Oregon, United States. The structure was built in 1909 by Nichols P. Smith, a Bend businessman. The two-story building originally housed a hardware business on t ...

Bend, Oregon Bend is a city in and the county seat of Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area. Bend is Central Oregon's largest city, with a population of 99,178 at the time of the 2020 U ...

is an example where the owner ran a store or other business on the ground floor and lived upstairs. There were many false front buildings constructed in the

, area between 1900 and 1910. However, the Smith hardware store is the only surviving example in downtown Bend."Western False Front''
Deschutes County Landmarks'', Deschutes County, Bend, Oregon, 19 July 2009.

References

External links

*{{Commons category-inline, False front architecture, Western false front architecture Architectural styles