Commercial and Public Buildings Until recently, virtually no research had been done on the form of commercial structures. Through the sponsorship of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, however, architectural historian Richard Longstreth has established a series of categories for classifying these buildings. His "Compositional Types in American Commercial Architecture: 1800-1950" (in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 2, ed. by Camille Wells [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986]) and his recently published work The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture (Washington, D C : The Preservation Press, 1987) are pioneering efforts that form the basis for this chapter. We have drawn from Longstreth's studies and have expanded his typology to include public as well as commercial architecture. Longstreth's system of classification is based upon form and more specifically on the facade, that portion of the building intended for public view. His analysis does not deal with the interior plans of commercial buildings, since they are usually flexible in arrangement and subject to continual change. His analysis includes a range of commercial functions, including banks, retail stores, office buildings, hotels, and theaters. Because of the prominence of public buildings in a majority of Utah communities, we have expanded Longstreth's typology to include city halls, city and county buildings, post offices, and court buildings. The major types of commercial and public buildings found in Utah include what Longstreth calls the one- and two-part commercial blocks, the enframed window wall, the two- and three-part vertical blocks, the temple front, the vault, the central block with wings, and the enframed block.
Fig. 85: Commercial building, c. 1900, Moroni, Sanpete County. A twopart commercial block with rock-faced enframing walls and a recessed entrance. The upper story of the facade contains rock-faced window openings over art-glass transom windows. (Photograph by Karl Haglund.)
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