06/05/2026
Close your eyes and picture a typical Wild West town. Do you see it? Most likely, the buildings you’re thinking of have what are called commercial false fronts, known by their wooden street-facing wall extending past a sloped roof. The design, its near extinction, and its replacement reflects the story of colonizers building on Native homelands, and how those early illegal settlements morphed into the permanent towns where many of us live and work today. The way this style of architecture represents our history, along with its awkward yet iconic look, makes it a personal favorite of mine.
Starting with the Gold Rush, promises of striking it rich met with various degrees of success, meaning towns could be booming one month and abandoned the next. Businesses needed to attract customers without overspending. This conundrum, apparently, had a solution—invest more money and time on the street-facing side of the store, and build the rest more cheaply!
False fronts were often based on fashionable Italianate architecture popular back East, which is why many sport long, elegant molded windows, bracketed overhangs, decorative detailing, and rectangular shapes. And while customers weren’t fooled by these facades, referencing the architecture of Eastern cities gave Colorado’s mining towns a more-established feeling.
These once-temporary buildings were the scaffolding that built Colorado cities and towns, remaking the natural landscape. Most were destroyed and rebuilt, others lost to fire or time. Only a few still exist, such as St. Elmo’s General Store and the McMurdy-Snetzer Building in Georgetown, which continue to preserve a consequential chapter of our shared history.
—Asma Al-Masyabi, Marketing & Communications Specialist
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Examples of commercial false-front architecture prevalent here in the West, from the WPA-created Denver Diorama to real-life towns of Colorado. History Colorado, AA.2009.12.05.098 & .210; 91.453.6; 93.499.48; 95.200.369
