California’s rich commercial architecture shares some styles with domestic architecture and emplys some styles (like Baroque Revival and Western False Front Commercial [which are often combined]) rarely seen in houses. Rarely, however, were commercial clients and architects indifferent to the effect of their buildings.

In 1972 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steve Izenour invented the term “Commercial Vernacular” for their book Learning from Las Vegas specifically to describe mimetic buildings in the shape of other objects (like doughnuts or hot dogs) and plain buildings serving as the frame for extravagant signage. Unfortunately, “Commercial Vernacular” has now become the fallback for every architectural historian unable (or unwilling) to identify the architectural style of a commercial building from the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.

It’s the job of architectural historians to identify styles of architecture; decide whether those styles are embodied by a building; and whether a building retains the integrity to communicate that significance. Clients or lead agencies can then decide what to do with that information, but they need to have accurate information to work with.