[jlousa]

Most buildings in Europe don't last hundreds of years though. The ones that do have had sizeable money dumped into them on regular intervals, the same could be done here if we wanted. Having modernized a couple of century old buildings in Europe it's not unusal to spend more money on renos then you did purchasing the building. In one case it cost 3times the cost of the building to bring it up to standards required for anyone to want to live in it. Bringing in Electric, running water, sewer isn't even the biggest cost, opening windows, raising floors, repairing fallen walls are very expensive and hard to find people that still work with stone.
Their isn't really any buildings that are centuries old and still liveable that haven't had major work done to them. The difference is they don't seem to mind spending money repairing/upgrading instead knocking down and starting over. In fact there is prestige in living in an older historical building and they can charge a premium for it.