Cathedrals? Bah, nonsense. Go into google street view and slap down a marker in any random town with buildings built a few decades ago on in the American east coast. Downtown in a random town, not in a modern suburb or commercial park. You'll see humble regular buildings, built for regular people to live or work in, with decorative trims and fancy brickwork.

Here's one I found in seconds: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2537582,-73.7922474,3a,30.7y...

Look at the brickwork around the windows on the house with the blue door. It's no cathedral, just some random building in a random small town nobody has ever heard of. The builders obviously cared to make it look nice anyway. If you go down the street you'll see many other buildings like that. Not all of them by any means, many of the others are plainer, more utilitarian, and many of those are obviously newer. But to say that "Regular living/working places are produced as cheaply as possible to meet the requirements. Both then and now." obviously isn't true. Some were built as cheap as possible then. Many are now. But many then were deliberately built to be nicer than was required.