Although the latter deals only with houses, it is by far the best of the group since it covers enough examples to really get a sense of the progression of styles. Unfortunately all of the style guides tend to be about fancy buildings, mostly on the East Coast. The Web materials will allow you to look at more typically Midwestern examples. What you will then be faced with doing is dating buildings by stylistic analysis, for which we have added some suggestions on a separate webpage. If you would like to do some more advanced research on this project, we recommend going to the local branch library and seeing if they have materials on the neighborhood or trying to locate some long-time residents that you might be able to interview.
Oral interviews are a special art form.
We recommend you talk with one of the instructors before trying them. It is also valuable to see just what your fellow students have done. In this assignment, you are to create a short piece of fiction using your Loop block and your neighborhood as the architectural backdrop. It can be based on the characters and plot of your earlier pieces or it can be something new. It should be at least 4 pages double spaced in length.