Hi Everyone,

So, in our last edition I recommended you get yourself a copy of A Field Guide to American Houses, by Virginia McAlester as a go-to guide for identifying and learning about historic houses. This time, I wanted to share with you a few of my favorite and best resources for identifying historic commercial buildings. A lot of style names and terminology are the shared by residential and commercial buildings. However, just by the nature of their distinct uses there are also some key differences. For example, who ever heard of a house with a “display window”? There are also styles that one might see more often or exclusively in either residential or commercial buildings. For example, Richardsonian Romanesque and Art Deco were pretty ubiquitous commercial styles but are rarely seen as house styles. The first link below is A layperson’s guide to historic commercial building styles in Wisconsin by Joe Lawniczak. Yes, I know, we are not in Wisconsin, but a lot of the styles found in this guide are also found here in Washington. The second link will take you to Anatomy of a Main Street Building, written by Washington State Architectural Historian (and my colleague at DAHP) Michael Houser. Keep this as your ultimate go-to guide, especially for identifying commercial building types (see: Type vs. Style in this guide) and commercial building terminology.

Michelle