Your projects should be coming together at this point. You should have completed your census research, have a timeline of your building’s site history (what changed and when), and even some sense of the broader changes occurring in the urban fabric–immigration and migration.

This essay is where you should think about how people–either individuals or groups–changed your site. It is the "Lares & Penates" essay where you think about the conversations had between the ghosts of the site and all the people who passed through and around your site.

Keep in mind to document the different sorts of people have used the site at different points in time, as suggested by evidence from the U.S. Census, City Plans, Sanborn Maps, City Directories, or Phone Books. ASK:

• How did this place shape the lives of people living/working here?
• How did people shape your site?
• What different purposes do those people have for being there, and how have those changed?
• How have people used the sites over time?
• Who lives/lived or works/worked nearby?
• What roles do these places seem to play for people?

Oral histories can be a great resource for this paper as well.

Let me offer an example of a brief thesis statement that can govern how you construct your papers: There has been (choose one: great change, little change, no change but rather great continuity, a mixed bag of change and continuity) in how people have related to my site/subject over the last (choose one: 50 years, 75 years, 125 years.) The story of people’s relation to my site can be characterized in the following ways, in terms of xxxx….