There are many different approaches to the study of historic districts and buildings. This essay suggests utilizing a multifaceted approach, which provides a greater capacity for interpretation and augments current efforts to document, preserve, and promote historic commercial districts. This approach would shift the study of the commercial building from a problem of classifying and interpreting architectural features to the understanding of the motivations for building the district and eventually understanding the economic role that each building contributed to the district. The City of Douglasville's commercial historic district is examined as a case study in the context of late nineteenth-century ““New South”” ideology.