Western False Front Architecture

Western false front architecture is a type of commercial building used in the Old West of the United States, built with a decorative facade, or false front, that conceals the actual roofline behind it. The style emerged in frontier towns across the southwestern United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the area around Bend, Oregon saw particularly extensive construction of false-front buildings between 1900 and 1910. A false-front building combines a parapet that hides the underlying roof, which might be a front gable, gambrel or barrel form, with higher-grade materials and heavier ornamentation on the street facade than on the building other sides. The intent was to project an image of stability and success by echoing the rectangular street facades of established eastern cities, giving young frontier settlements the appearance of permanence and development.