What people think is quality and what is are not always the same.
Modern building codes make the cheapest houses much better than the best houses from 100 years ago. Nobody knows how to see insulation so they don't count it. Old houses often overbuild some obvious beam and so that part of the house is very strong, but some other beam wasn't strong. Yes old houses had access to old growth trees that were stronger, but that doesn't make up for good engineering.
Insulation used to be a ton less important—wood and gas heating were cheap, and nobody had air conditioning because it didn't exist yet.
What was more important was the layout of the house, the windows, and the ceiling heights, all being thoughtfully arranged to allow the right kinds of airflow in the right seasons.
Most modern houses in climates like seen in most of the US turn into an unbearable mold-farm of a wet oven if the AC is turned off over the Summer—they depend on AC or they start kinda decaying in place within a year, aside from being unbearable to enter on a hot day. A 1900-construction house that hasn't been updated to something like modern standards is far more comfortable to live in, in those circumstances.
(your broader point that some things in modern houses are better due to e.g. improving materials or engineering even as other things like framing have gotten worse due to worsening materials, I don't dispute, but modern house design as far as airtightness and insulation is very much a trade-off that leaves them dependent on AC in many—and, as the Earth warms, ever-more—climates, not strictly an improvement)
> wood and gas heating were cheap, and nobody had air conditioning because it didn't exist yet.
Gas heating in an old house for just one month uses more energy than all HVAC loads for a year in a similar sized new house. Where I live you must heat during that month of the pipes freeze/break so there is no getting around.
I live on the Potomac River in Virginia and am regularly shocked that the "come here" houses are what they left behind in northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs. Houses are not designed for cross ventilation or with deep porches, and the like. I mean, all the cottages we visited on Cape Cod in my younger days were designed to have windows open and for the natural sea breeze to do the heavy lifting.
The old family farm, in Indiana, had all these short "barns". Because they were from Germany, they couldn't figure out how to build properly footed foundations, in the Indiana wilderness. The result was the bottom logs of the houses kept rotting out. So, every 10-or-so years, they'd just build a new log cabin. The old log cabin was the new barn. And, yeah, the old growth logs meant most of the cabins were only 4 logs high, since each log was 3' thick, after they were squared up. By the time the cabin rotted out the second log, the last logs were dry enough they'd stop rotting. The farm had a number of these weird, short, log cabin barns.
wrong, the hight of wood technology and understanding is behind us
I have worked on many very old wooden buildings, dateing back to the mid 1700's and learned from the last carpenters and shipwrights, blacksmiths
standing who carried those traditions, as things they learned as part of a greater whole.
The understanding of how to keep structures dry, and also, how the inevitable condensation and leakage must be shed, is wraped up in tiny details, choices in wood species and specific grain orientations.
If you are discussing, settler built homes, then
the choices become based on pragmatism and litteral, life/death survival decisions, so things like, a stone fireplace, but @3' the chimney is chinked log or split wood, and I have seen wooden
chimney foundations,made from truely massive, huen
timbers, dovetailed together, 36" plus timbers,still supporting an in use kitchen apparatus, after 300 years.
How is that possible?, simple, site selection, dry
but not too dry, with a spring for a well close by, and if you dig into the details, there is plenty of history around choosing "dry wells" just for, basements and larders, non muddy spots for
a house, etc.
It is a mistake and a disservice to underestimate the sophistication of the many many, hidden details and the consious choices behind them, in our ancestors lives.
seaweed, insulation, and "brushing" foundations every fall......
goes on and on
Old buildings are often stronger because they didn’t have the modelling and precision manufacturing required to make them to an exact standard - instead they were overbuilt.
Modern building codes make the cheapest houses much better than the best houses from 100 years ago. Nobody knows how to see insulation so they don't count it. Old houses often overbuild some obvious beam and so that part of the house is very strong, but some other beam wasn't strong. Yes old houses had access to old growth trees that were stronger, but that doesn't make up for good engineering.