Pre-1950 CRE research paper topics?

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Hi everybody-

This is my first post on BiggerPockets and I have what I would guess is an uncommon question for this forum... I'm a senior at UW-Madison working on starting up the last research paper I will probably ever write. It's for a class titled The American Economy since 1865 and my professor is giving us a pretty large avenue of topics to write about, as long as it connects to the U.S. economy in some fashion and is centered around a pre-1950 period of time.

I wanted to write about something that I have an interest in, so I've narrowed it down to real estate (and preferably the commercial side). I was curious if anybody has any cool ideas for a potential thesis for me to look into? Is there anybody out there with a good understanding of the CRE landscape of the U.S. from 1865-WW2? A lot of my preliminary research has uncovered lots of papers on residential real estate booms and busts in this time period, but it's been tough finding strictly CRE papers. Any help or thoughts would be much appreciated!! Jack