420 Main Avenue Commercial Building

The Burnham Building, historically known as the 420 Main Avenue Commercial Building, has been a part of Moorhead since the 1880s. It is a false-front building, which used to be a common style in Moorhead, but is now fairly rare.[1] As Moorhead became a modernized city, false front buildings were replaced with structures made of bricks and steel as opposed to cheap wood and nails. The Burnham building stands alone as the sole reminder of the original false-front construction in Moorhead.

Raised in Vermont, Frank Burnham came to Moorhead from Chicago after getting his law degree. He had also served in the Union Army.[2] He came to Moorhead as a businessman looking for new ventures in 1872 and eventually went into real-estate.[3] Burnham purchased land for his building from the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company.[4] In 1880 his false-front building was constructed. Initially using the building for his law practice, Burnham sold the structure in 1884. It was listed as a residence on fire insurance maps for the next several decades. While in Moorhead, Burnham was notably founder and later president of the First National Bank of Moorhead, served as Clay County’s public schools superintendent, and as the Clay County attorney.[5]

The Burnham building has a unique architectural style to Clay County called “boomtown architecture.”[6] According to design specialist Joe Lawniczak, "This style is characterized by tall false facades (parapets) hiding a pitched roof behind... these wood-framed and wood-sided buildings were typically built during a city's first commercial boom, but were often lost to fire and replaced with brick.”[7]

In the late nineteenth century, Moorhead was a trade route to the farther West and Canada and received a lot of traffic from St. Paul. In addition, Moorhead was popular for settlers because of its good farmland. As a result, Moorhead and the surrounding area experienced a population boom. Because of this big population boom, Moorhead along with other growing towns saw the construction of these false-front buildings. These were structures made of flimsy material, not made to last a long time. They were designed to give the appearance of a fancy structure to make the town seem more advanced and appealing and in time to be replaced by better built structures.[8] Key attributes of a false-front house are that the front is a flat surface put in front of the regular house structure to give the appearance of professionalism and height.

The Burnham building is now the final original false-front building in Moorhead. After being sold by Burnham it went through multiple owners and is currently the residence of YHR Partners architecture firm. It looks slightly different from what the original building was in the late 1800s, mostly due to updates to keep the building standing such as improved siding, however it still retains its charm and stands out amongst the rest of the buildings along the block.

[1] Tom Harvey, “NPGallery Asset Detail,” National Register of Historic Places, accessed January 26, 2021. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/80002013.

[2] North Dakota State University [NDSU], “The Burnham Building, 420 Main Avenue Commercial Building, YHR Partners,” PocketSights Tour Builder, North Dakota State University, accessed March 7, 2021, https://pocketsights.com/tours/place/The-Burnham-Building-420-Main-Avenue-Commercial-Building-YHR-Partners-6401#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20starting%20the,on%20the%20location%20in%201880.

[3]North Dakota State University, Burnham Building.

[4] Harvey, National Register.

[5] NDSU, Burnham Building.

[6] Harvey, National Register.

[7] Joe Lawniczak, “A layperson's guide to historic commercial building styles in Wisconsin,” wedc.org, Jim Draeger, accessed March 24, 2021, https://wedc.org/blog/laypersons-guide-historic-commercial-building-styles-in-wisconsin/. 

[8] Kingston Wm. Heath, "False-Front Architecture on Montana's Urban Frontier." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 3, (1989): 206, doi:10.2307/3514305.