Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

A concrete sidewalk with a "parking" of grass and mud. A square smug brown house, rather damp. A narrow concrete walk up to it. Sickly yellow leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snags of wool from the cottonwoods. A screened porch with pillars of thin painted pine surmounted by scrolls and brackets and bumps of jigsawed wood. No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze. A lugubrious bay-window to the right of the porch. Window curtains of starched cheap lace revealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible.

"You'll find it old-fashioned -- what do you call it? -- Mid-Victorian. I left it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary. " Kennicott sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back to his own.