In the past, Peoria built things that could only have been built here — Victorian mansions on the bluffs, a sandstone city hall once voted the best in the country, a hillside of mid-century modern homes designed by local architects. But the buildings going up in the Peoria area lately tend to look the same — flat-roofed blocks of brick, metal panel, and glass — the kind of efficient, from-nowhere construction spreading across every mid-sized American city. It wasn't always like this.