The building looked like a Pizza Hut. This aficionado of suburban architecture was convinced it used to be something else.

Our suburbs can seem indistinguishable from one another — and indistinguishable within themselves: just endless, sidewalk-less accretions of tract homes, gas stations and strip shopping centers.

But grow up in the suburbs and you come to know the architecture as a cowboy knows the landmarks along his cattle drive: the Golden Arches of McDonald’s, the fauxdobe of Taco Bell, the rising sun of Roy Rogers. When the topography looks a little off, your brain notices.