3 ms·

Hi Neighbor! I walk by your garden a few times a week and always enjoy it. I also have long been curious what the history behind the oddly shaped building was.

• zachklein 3y ago
  It's technically a butterfly roof. When the building was built in early 1880s Harrison was a major railroad line. The front of the building, as far as I can tell from contemporaneous surveys, was occupied by a small grocery with a shopkeeper's apartment in the back. One theory is that the butterfly was used to accomplish a false front (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_false_front_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_false_front_architectu...) that was common in the West for commercial buildings. Another is that the roof was used to channel rainwater into a single downspout that could be easily captured. Either way, it is unusual. Butterflies didn't really emerge in the US until the mid-century modern movement in Southern California and then they were mostly style.