Alternate Gothic was designed in 1903 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders (ATF). The idea was to provide several alternate widths of one design, namely Alternate Gothic No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, to be more flexible with regard to different typographic tasks. All three styles are black and condensed, and thus work best for posters, headlines and advertisements.

The open source font, League Gothic, is a revival of Alternate Gothic No.1, however these 'originals' come with a full set of Latin-1, Latin Extended-A and Latin Extended-B characters, along with plenty of punctuation and fractions.