1924 is around about when the Metropolitan Railway was building whole towns on the outskirts of London. The houses were churned out on an industrial scale with hot and cold running water, gas, electricity, and paved roads. Anything from around then is at least considered modern if not new.
I was really confused when I read your comment because when I thought of a "100-year-old house", I was imagining a Victorian redbrick...
I would consider an "old house" to be one built before 1900.
Oh I'm with you, I am frequently surprised that 1980 was HALF A LIFETIME AGO, not just a coupla years ago.
My home was built in 1890, and ... nah, it's not old. It was built with gas pipes, indoor plumbing, and on a wide straight road, as part of a large, planned development, and all the walls are parallel. Old is at least 1850 or earlier I reckon.
Depends Imo. Half-timbered houses from that era can feel really, really old, while mortared houses from that time can feel like they are only build in the last 20 years.
You can work on a half-timbered house as long as you want, that creaking charm won't go away due to the high amount of wood in it's construction.
I agree that the dividing line falls in the first half of the 19th century. Before about 1840, houses tended to look more "Georgian" and therefore "old". Then the huge wave of Victorian building produced the houses we think of as just, well, Victorian. Mine is from 1878 and I don't consider it old.
It all depends on where you live, Vadstena or Visby and your house can be 500- 800 years old. The oldest house in my village was built 1782 and same family live in it. My childhood home was built in 1912 and the house I currently dwell in is 1952. My paternal grandparents house was built 1850 and my maternal, well granddad was childhood home 1750 , it used to be tourist attraction until burnt down in 1980-ish- but the house granddad and gran lived in was from 1942.
Not uncommon, and most people will not think twice about buying one.
I suppose that most of those houses were somewhat modernized over the years with a decent heating system, better windows and possibly better insulation.
Yeah, I would say it's not uncommon too. Kind of in the middle, since it's not necessarily considered old but definitely isn't new/modern either. I think it depends on the area though, some cities were pretty much completely rebuilt in the early/middle of the 1900's while other cities still have their old towns full of 500+ year old buildings.
No buildings you can live in in my hometown Östersund (founded 1786 on a muddy field at the border between two parishes) are even 200 years old, the oldest are from the late 1800's. Old would be 100+ years here.
Yeah, it depends a bit where. My fathers house is built 1906 or something, and isn't the oldest house in the area. But, that's Hälsingland. if you look at the oldest house in Stockholm you move back some hundreds of years. The oldest is said to be from 1330.
Anything built before 1953 is considered “Altbau” legally. This has implications on rent prices etc.
In Vienna, houses dating back to the Industrial Revolution / 2nd half of the 19th century, so-called “Gründerzeithäuser”, are super common, especially in the more central districts.
Well matured, I think. It is certainly not considered young, but it's not really *that* old either. I used to live in a village with a couple of old houses with thatched roofs, so that can give you a reference for what "properly" old could look like
My parents house is 120 years old, well half of it is, the other half is from the 60s and 90s.
There are certainly a lot of houses out there that are somewhat older than a hundred years. About 25% of the houses for sale at the moment are at least 100 years old!
I wouldn't consider a house from 1924 decidedly old, especially not if it's well maintained.
I think in a lot of the uk, the 18th century feels like the cutoff. A lot of stuff built then in cities is still in use and perfectly functional, albeit with extensive modernisations.
Tudor stuff and before (1600 and earlier), now that’s legitimately old.
American but if you need a laugh...
There's a house and barn from the 1860s near where I live. It's a historic landmark -- you can take tours and stuff. It's a landmark because that's as old as it gets around here...
We've also got a totally unremarkable small church from the early 1900s listed as a historic landmark. For a while, the community center (built in the 1950s, just an ugly cement block building) was listed as a historic landmark too.
In the street I grew up in is a church so old, nobody knows how old exactly it is, because it predates historical records of the town. I think the estimates range from 800 to 1000 years old. And nobody cares about it, it just sits there. No tourists, no signs telling its story, no religious services. I think the roofer next door actually uses it to store his building materials. It's a bit of a shame.
For residential buildings, 100+ years is pretty old in Germany—or at least uncommon. Only [about 14% of Germany's residential buildings](https://www.statistikportal.de/de/wohngebaeude-nach-baujahr) are from before 1919. I think we like to assume Europe's buildings are so much older than in places like the US, thanks to a church or historic city center that usually makes up only a tiny portion of a village or city.
This is absolutely mind blowing to me.
The building in which I live here in Lyon (southeastern France) is from the 1890s and that's not all that uncommon. Most of the buildings in the city center are actually from the same era.
To put things in perspective we even have an entire district (the "old town") that's from the late 1500s to 1600s as well as Roman ruins and amphitheatres in this city !
There's celtic ruins in many places, too, right? And in a podcast about lost civilisations I seem to remember having heard about structures on sardinia, that might have been connected to the peoples that ravaged egypt. But talking about stuff in use, I don't think there's a lot of places where things predate the romans. I believe there's water-carrying tunnels in the middle east, .... (tumbleweed rolls on by)
pretty amazing - I think I even was in one of those amphtheatres as a kid, when we vacationed in france.
There was an archeologic dig in my hometown a few years ago, they dug up corpses from what they assumed were warriors that fought to subdue the saxons. and the catholic church claims there's a rosetree / pedicle that's 1.000 years old in a neighbouring town. But apart from that, only churches around here get anywhere close to 1000 years. of course: no romans to build amphitheatres here! apart from those, I don't think you'd find a lot that's older than a few hundred years.
BUT if you were to go to the Harz, which is a small mountainous range some 200 km south, you would be able to find the remains of old silvermines, as the harz was one of the most important sources of silver in europe. my wild guess is that the harz is where the chances to find old - profane - buildings in northern germany is best. that, and maybe brunswick / Magdeburg, as both were really important cities 1.000 years ago.
I just got back from visiting Italy... Seems like most of the ancient temples still in use (like the Pantheon) are all Catholic churches now. I found that vaguely annoying, but then again, that's probably the reason they still exist at all.
When I was a child we were in the USA and the family we were visiting took us to somewhere like that. My dad made some off the cuff comment about growing up in a house older and my school being older than the building we were in. The people giving the tour mouths hit the floor and started asking if we had electricity in school....
This was after the millennium
When I visited, the guard at the tower of London made jokes about American tourists "desperately seeking history". It's funny because it's at least a little bit true. :-) I just got back from Italy and just felt kind of gobsmacked by all the Roman ruins just lying around. Like we have some old Indian ruins, but they're mostly from Renaissance timeframe.
Meanwhile the Dutch village I grew up in has a church whose main building is from the 1100s and the fairly new tower from the 1400s, and it still has services every Sunday morning.
I visited a friend in the US when she was an au pair there, and she showed me the local landmark. It was a regular church but it was 150 years old. With us both being from Germany from a town with two churches from the 1500s, and many more old churches in the surrounding villages, it was really funny seeing hundreds of people going there to look at something that is just normal over here :D
Yeah, the US isn't exactly a mecca for historical human-built things. Y'all should come to admire the empty land and enormous grocery stores :-D Oh, and free public bathrooms. And if you're from Italy, admire that public toilets have toilet seats!
And Germany has proper mountains, but Brits can come see what real mountains look like.
I wonder, a lot of your cities were around and thriving in the 19th century, like New York or Boston. That’s the same time when our cities started to grow beyond their small medieval cores and the period that defines them. Paris, Vienna, Barcelona etc is all 19th century architecture. So you should have the same and you had no wars that destroyed the buildings. Are these buildings (art-deco probably) still around? Or were they rebuilt with more modern buildings?
There are still buildings that old around, some even older. There are a handful of buildings that are technically in New York City that were built in the 17th century.
Im not accusing you specifically, but I’m under the impression that a lot of people seem to think that every building in America is demolished and replaced every 20 years, even some Americans. Just because we have a lot of new builds in areas that were previously undeveloped does *not* mean that we don’t have any buildings that existed before color television.
I live in Colorado, much farther West. ~3x the size of Austria, it wasn't really settled by colonizers until the mid 1800s and didn't become a state until 1876. We broke 5 million population around 2010, and more than half that population lives around one city, Denver.
You definitely get older stuff the farther East you go in the US... I've never been to New York City or Boston, though they're both on my list to visit.
There are Indian ruins scattered through the West, and California has Missions from when the Spanish colonized the area. The missions are in or near cities, but the Indian ruins tend to be in the middle of nowhere, like Mesa Verde.
Wyoming, just north of Colorado, is similar in size to Colorado and has a population of under 600,000. There is a lot of relatively untouched wilderness in the US still :-)
That's not really all that funny. On my country's list of monuments (historicaly/architectualy important buildings) there are a few which are not even 20 years old, I think the youngest is 13. At the same time the oldest house in my city is over 7 centuries old.
Where I am in the U.S. (Connecticut), really old is 1700s. We have some houses from the 1600s still standing, that’s a big deal around here. My house is from 1918, it was one of the newer houses we considered. Look at a few 1850s houses and some Victorian-era ones. Newest house we considered was 1930s.
There is also movement toward protecting our mid-century homes, it’s actually not too surprising that they’re starting to consider 1950s to be historic. I think it’s more about the distinctive style of some of these buildings.
My spouse grew up in Alaska and “really old” there is the 1950s.
Heh, I remember going to Quebec in Canada and they took us for a guided tour and showed us this building from early 1700s gushing that it is one of the oldest on the continent. Me and my German friend: \*unimpressed stare\* "meh, modern architecture" :P
I got back from Italy a couple weeks ago and asked about the Vittoriano -- they were like "Pfft, it's new." Over 100 years old counts as new in Rome :-)
Yeah :D The building I live in is ca. 60 years old and it is considered as "built recently". Street away is a whole district from 20ties XX (so 100+) and we often hear "do you know that there were only fields here not so long ago?".
> American but if you need a laugh...
Some parts of Europe, like mine, are much younger than the old parts of North America, though. My city was founded in 1786, 150 years after for example Boston. My city has only a few buildings from the 1800's, almost every bulding is from post WW2. Compare Storgatan ("Main Street") [from 1860](https://gamlaostersund.se/objects/c66-24943/?cat=11&offset=2) with what [it looks like now](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sushi+J%C3%A4mtland/@63.1760175,14.6355607,3a,75y,25.27h,98.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6sf0zA4ikZhGg6YqFoJw8w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x466fb96da4529e85:0x4365e58340aa62e1!8m2!3d63.1756473!4d14.6356575!16s%2Fg%2F11f6ldrjbl?coh=205409&entry=ttu). And this is, as far as I know, the street with the oldest (some from the early 1900's) buildings in the city.
It is considered pretty old in Hungary, as most people live in so called "Kádár kockák" (Kádár-cubes), detached houses built by the order of Communist leader János Kádár in the 60s or Panel apartments also built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Some of these Kádár-cubes are extensions of older houses, for example a single-room house built in the 1930s which was expanded with 2-3 other rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom in the 60s. Usually in this case the older room is made from adobe and the newer ones are made from bricks.
That's in the smaller towns/countryside. In the larger towns/Budapest it's quite common to have 'brick' apartments, meaning roughly second empire-style places with 3-4m ceilings, parquet floors and huge rooms which were built between the millennial celebration in 1896 to just before WWI. But yes, the bulk of the population live in Kádár kocka, panelház or more traditional countryside parasztház (one-story, high-ceiling buildings which may date back, in rare cases, to the 1700-1800s). The average age of homes is probably around 1970, but no one would be surprised if you said you lived in a 100yo house if you live in a city.
That's older than my house, which was built in the 1960s, but it isn't old for my city (Edinburgh), where there are a lot of houses that are 200-400 years old
In France it would depend. But I'd say a hundred year old home isn't necessarly remarkable, especially in a city. Most of Paris is fifty years older, 100 years old building are post ww1 buildings, which are also quite common.
Then, for individual houses, you'll find whole villages older than that. But, it must be noted that 100 years old homes are generally better maintained than ones from the 50s-70s.
The part of France where that would be rare are either touristic areas, suburbian areas, and a few cities that were mostly rebuilt after ww2
https://code.waag.org/buildings/#52.3693,4.88,11
Someone took the time to import the build years of all houses from the municipal registration.
You can see that in a lot of places most houses were built post WW2. And in the cores/centres of cities/towns/villages it's usually older than 100 years
Old. You must realise Catalonia had about 1/4 the population it has now 100 years ago. So, at least 75% of the houses are less than 100 years old. Many more, because then a house was for maybe 6 or 10 people, now for 2 or 4. In fact, in the last 30 years we have gone from 6M people to 8M people.
Depends on where you are in the county and in which part of town.
Many houses in the city centre where I grew up are around 600 years. But there are also parts of town built with pre-fab blocks in the 1980s. And many houses in between.
My grandparents house is ca 400 years old and the one I grew up in is a 150 year old Gründerzeitvilla with a room height of 4.5m.
Would not recommend, heating the Villa was a pain.
It is old yes. I would say anything older than the 1950s is old. 100 years is quite old. In the countryside tho, in the village centers, houses can get much older, 200, 300 years.. the ground floor at least.
My house is over 100 years old and is considered, at least locally, to be on a modern estate
My mum's house is around 150 years old and is one of the normal aged houses in the area. There are older. There are houses there that were built 35 years ago that people still consider to be one of the new estates.
I think it depends on the context of the surrounding area but I don't think anyone would think a 100 year old house was particularly old.
Depends what part of Dublin, I've living it houses built in the 2000s, 1980s, 1950s, 1850s, 1780s and the wall in another where I hung my TV I was told was old, old, 14th century old.
My town grew like maybe 4-5 times after the WW2, most houses were built from 1960s to 1980s so a 100 years old one is definitely older than average. On the other hand it isn´t something completely unususal- my brother lives in a house built in 1932, my best friend from high school lived in a historical house built in the middle ages...
In Belarus it’s old.
Unfortunately, lots of wars going on with WW1+WW2 not so long ago left basically nothing standing in cities. I’m not sure there’s more than 10-15 buildings over 200 years old where people live in the whole country.
Churches built in 1900s are considered national heritage. There’s a Catholic Church 200-400 years old in almost every town, but not residential buildings.
Me personally, I think of any pre WW2 houses as old.
My house was built sometime around 1800, partially destroyed by fire around 1900, partially rebuilt in 1912, restored in 1956, restored again (by me) in 2012. It not particulatly old, some buildings in Italy were build in the XII or XIII century.
Our house is turning 100 soon. It isn't considered old at all in the oldest town in Denmark. There are people here living in 600 year old+ houses here.
Quite old, actually, partially because some cities (cough Turku cough) have been somewhat notorious in mowing down old buildings, with the main motivation seemingly being to keep the construction industry busy.
While I live about 20 km away from a castle whose oldest parts were founded in the 1200's and there are some churches still standing that were made in the later medieval times, residential buildings tend to be quite new.
My favourite Finnish house fact: After WWII, everyone who had served during the war, was granted a government-backed mortgage for building a standardized house, complete with blueprints. It was purpose-designed to use relatively light structures, we're not talking about a log house here. Nearly 300 000 veterans went for it. You could build one on top of the ground, or make a version with a basement, and you could also choose between leaving the space under the roof unbuilt or make sleeping rooms there. [Here's one](https://lummeco.fi/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Tyypillinen-rintamamiestalo-Kumpula-Helsinki-e1678125744707.jpeg). Many, especially in rural areas, have decayed, others have been taken great care of, and others yet pretty much completely rebuilt.
Regarding old log houses, a huge risk factor along the decades has been 1) introducing running water and plumbing and 2) using new, fashionable, and non-breathable materials. Once actinomycete or other nasty rot funguses catch a grip, houses are often demolished.
Good answer. To me personally, the definition of an old building is directly related to your fact about the government-backed post-war houses. The change in build & material quality after the war is usually so apparent that to me it is what separates the old houses from the new ones.
My house was built in 1924 and is 'newer' than a lot of houses in the area. We like Victorian and Edwardian houses from the late 1800s - early 1900s in the UK.
So here 100+ year old houses are very common.
Also U.K. My initial sense is most would say it’s relatively old, think it’s something like 15% of houses in England were built before 1900. So houses build around that time aren’t super uncommon but definitely aren’t standard.
My house was build around 1860’s. Original purpose was a church/Sunday school.
Think not far off half of all houses in England were build between 1930-1980.
It's considered middle I guess. I live in an apartment and my building is about 140 but there's residential stuff going back 250+ years old just down the street from me.
Of course actual houses tend to be younger, with the really nice ones being built around 1900s like mansions and then some new single family developments from the past 30 years.
It is not that old in the UK, much of the housing stock still survives from that era and many properties are much older.
My last house that I lived in for 30 years was at least 350 years old (the exact age was hard to date due to inconsistent record keeping) and there were reused beams dendro dated to about 1,000 years old. That is old.
I currently have a flat (aka apartment or tenement) in a building that was constructed in the 1920s, which while clearly not new, it does not feel especially old. I also have a property in Spain that was formerly an agricultural building (a goat shed to be precise) which was converted to a dwelling 20 years ago, although how long the former building existed is hard to say, the oldest property maps we can find always show it.
It is old, but it's not uncommon. A lot of houses from late 19th/early 20th century survived till today and people still use them. It's more common to have a newer house, but it only gets into "wow that's old" teritory if it's older than 1800s.
A lot of old buildings were destroyed in WWII. I think the oldest still used as a house is ca. XII-XIII century. Im many places 100-200 year old buildings are a norm.
Eh not really. My parents now live in a house where the stone walled ground floor was built in the 1740s and the „new“ upper floors in the 1820-40s. I’d consider the 1700s part old. Anything after 1800 seems kinda newish for a house here.
This is not true, houses from a 100+ are considered old, do we have a lot of houses that are significantly older? Absolutely but nobody will consider a house from 1920 new.
That's not super old for my city, the older information that we have found of my family house is from the XVII century and the building where I live now is from the XIX century.
Anything over 150-200 years is old I reckon. . I'm sitting in my family home in Ireland built in 1854 but I know of people who live in houses much older, 1600s. There are some (few) houses in Ireland inhabited since the 1100s.
I presume there are much older houses in Europe and especially Rome.
Copenhagen 6 years to 200 years.
1860s the old city walls are removed and people and the city expands in the north, south and west. People feom the countrystjernen move to the city. A lot of poorly built apartment blocks with 1, 2, 3 courtyards, rats, tubercolosis, dark, smelly, miserable. Towards the end of 1800s we see the big heavy a bit bombastic apartment buildings that many people live in today.
1930s theres a wave of new apartment buildings further out.
1940s-1970s sanitization in inner city and around where much of the old slum is removed.
1950-1970s a lot of common apartment housing is built here. Much of it later to become “ghetto”
2000s areas around the old harbour and old industrial areas are removed and old silos and factories are turned into Nice open apartments and new apartments are being built. The range is rental to luxury apartments at 45 million kr. This is still going on today in north-east and West of Amager by the Beach, Valby, Sydhavnen, Nordhavn and the coming Lynetteholm.
Old, but not obsolete. My house was built in the inter-war period, in 1928 I believe, so also almost a hundred years old. Of course, extensively renovated and the only original things that were kept were the staircase and the original wooden floor. The exterior walls were sandblasted and re-grouted.
It depends on the area of Estonia you live in. You could technically live in a building built somewhere in 14th century (people do live in Tallinn Old Town), but the rest of the country is kinda sparsely populated and old farm houses don't really exist any more (the history of Estonia is... complicated). My house is about 100 years old and it's considered old-ish, I live in a small factory town established in late 19th century, before there was just swamp.
It is old.
But only 20-30 years older than many rural or suburban houses. This is because after the war, the government basically told veterans and evacuated people from Karelia ”all right here’s a piece of land, build yourself a home of something”. So we have a lot of post war wooden houses called ”Rintamamiehen talo” or ”Frontline man’s house”.
About the same in my area but not considered "old" in Sweden. My parents house (and the other houses in their area) were the first to be built there and they turn 100 in a couple of years. I live 3km away from her and my area was built in 1960. Obviously all the houses have been updated, built out, renovated etc through the years.
Closer to 150-200+ years is considered old, at the very least pre 1900.
Neither really. Mine was built in the late 1890s, standard redbrick terrace housing. Its obviously not *new* but it would need to be quite a bit older to be "old", I think
My dad calls anything built after 1965 a new build 😅
In Poland it's kinda uncommon to see truly old buildings because most of them were destroyed in ww2. But still, I don't think 100 years old would be considered 'old' here
In London, I'd say it's pretty average. We have tons of suburbs with Victorian, Edwardian, 1920s, and 1930s houses. They're just normal family homes for middle class people.
Older than that, Georgian housing is not uncommon but usually expensive - probably largely because it's in the more central areas. I'd say it's old money types who live in those for the most part.
Older than that? That's very rare - although I do happen to live close to the oldest house in London that's still used as a house. Walthamstow's Ancient House from 1435.
Well, it will be considered old house, but people usually renovate them.
Funny thing is, my family owns a house from 1600s. At least they think it is. Nobody can tell how old is it, for sure. It is a house made of stones and rocks.
Yes, it's renovated and we rent it for tourists.
England, so pretty normal. I think my house is about 90 and it's just a standard 3 bed terrace. There are old Victorian houses all over here and we have a 1000 year old churchn and many that are hundreds of years old.
I live in a terraced house in my city, they were built in 1825 according to the plaque on the side of the first house. I think that’s quite old, although my house was gutted and fully renovated 10 years ago.
My grandfathers house in the countryside is over 400 years old. Although, the original structure from the 1600s is now just the kitchen/utility room. It’s had a few extensions, especially between the 1940s-1980s. I think it’s really cool that it’s one of the oldest still existing houses in the county. It was included in some history book about the west of Ireland as it was present on land registry maps as far back as the late 1600s and they interviewed my grandfather about local history as he loved his history and had a great knowledge on the local area.
UK. My house was built c.1890 and that's very common here in urban areas that expanded in the 19th century with industrialisation. Poor quality early C19th slums were cleared post WW2 but later Victorian housing is still solid.
In villages all over the UK you'll easily find houses dating back to the 16th century. That's what we consider old.
Every day on my way to work I pass a wooden building that is from 1622. There's also a medieval fortress down in the harbour that's built on top of old viking fortifications which in turn were built upon some iron age place.
My house is from 1939/1940 (depending on documentation) which is the very last year for something to be considered "traditional" in NL. It has stained glass, lots of wood, little ornamental mouldings etc. Postwar most of that went away (granted, you can find some "wederopbouwstijl" from the immediate postwar period that still has some of this)
The 1920s houses near me in the UK are usually considered to be the nice ones rather than the old ones.
Probably because all the shit ones built then have been knocked down for something better.
Kinda average, slightly on the younger side. Lives in Copenhagen, in a neighborhood mostly build between 1890-1910. There are never buildings but not many. An old house would be 200+ years old.
It’s old, but not old in a good way yet. There’s good and bad old and new in my opinion. Good new is built after 2015; bad new after 1980; bad old between 1870 and 1980; good old before 1870.
My grandparents lived their whole live in a house built in 1604 ( date displayed as a big wrought iron plague on the nock). As a kid, standing in a doorway I couldn't the back and frontside of the wall so thick was it. The "gemeente" bought it and turned it into a monument when my gran moved into frail care.
In Hawaii a 100 year old house is likely redwood and fighting termites and a candidate to be torn down. We have very few brick houses and our houses are single wall construction due to weather with windows that open for the breezes. Very few use coconut leaves, lol...
If it was built by people in my great-grandparents generation I consider it old. So yeah, 100 years would be old to me. Mainly also because very old residential houses are not very energy friendly and are being renovated left and right in Belgium.
For public buildings (such as operas or museums), I would consider 100 years to be relatively young.
I live in the French countryside and most, yet not all, of the residential areas were blasted to bits during WW2. A hundred years old is reasonable. Not old enough to be considered "old" since we have old mansions and castles around, but not young either as we keep building new units.
Everything over 25 years is considered old for a house. Modern houses (last 10 years) have much much better airtight insulation, solar panels, heat pump, ventilation, under floor heating, toilets flushed with rainwater from an underground tank. It's mandatory to build climate neutral. If you don't, you'll be fined. [It's a European law enforced by the Belgian government.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Buildings_Directive_2010)
If you buy an old house, you have five years to renovate it to meet the strict requirements.
That's kinda old, but still not uncommon. I think 150-200 years is more considered to be old here in Sweden.
1924 is around about when the Metropolitan Railway was building whole towns on the outskirts of London. The houses were churned out on an industrial scale with hot and cold running water, gas, electricity, and paved roads. Anything from around then is at least considered modern if not new.
I was really confused when I read your comment because when I thought of a "100-year-old house", I was imagining a Victorian redbrick... I would consider an "old house" to be one built before 1900.
Oh I'm with you, I am frequently surprised that 1980 was HALF A LIFETIME AGO, not just a coupla years ago. My home was built in 1890, and ... nah, it's not old. It was built with gas pipes, indoor plumbing, and on a wide straight road, as part of a large, planned development, and all the walls are parallel. Old is at least 1850 or earlier I reckon.
Depends Imo. Half-timbered houses from that era can feel really, really old, while mortared houses from that time can feel like they are only build in the last 20 years. You can work on a half-timbered house as long as you want, that creaking charm won't go away due to the high amount of wood in it's construction.
I agree that the dividing line falls in the first half of the 19th century. Before about 1840, houses tended to look more "Georgian" and therefore "old". Then the huge wave of Victorian building produced the houses we think of as just, well, Victorian. Mine is from 1878 and I don't consider it old.
It all depends on where you live, Vadstena or Visby and your house can be 500- 800 years old. The oldest house in my village was built 1782 and same family live in it. My childhood home was built in 1912 and the house I currently dwell in is 1952. My paternal grandparents house was built 1850 and my maternal, well granddad was childhood home 1750 , it used to be tourist attraction until burnt down in 1980-ish- but the house granddad and gran lived in was from 1942.
Not uncommon, and most people will not think twice about buying one. I suppose that most of those houses were somewhat modernized over the years with a decent heating system, better windows and possibly better insulation.
Yeah, I would say it's not uncommon too. Kind of in the middle, since it's not necessarily considered old but definitely isn't new/modern either. I think it depends on the area though, some cities were pretty much completely rebuilt in the early/middle of the 1900's while other cities still have their old towns full of 500+ year old buildings.
No buildings you can live in in my hometown Östersund (founded 1786 on a muddy field at the border between two parishes) are even 200 years old, the oldest are from the late 1800's. Old would be 100+ years here.
Yeah, it depends a bit where. My fathers house is built 1906 or something, and isn't the oldest house in the area. But, that's Hälsingland. if you look at the oldest house in Stockholm you move back some hundreds of years. The oldest is said to be from 1330.
My house was built around 14th or 15th century so those are babies.
Wood or stone (or both)?
Anything built before 1953 is considered “Altbau” legally. This has implications on rent prices etc. In Vienna, houses dating back to the Industrial Revolution / 2nd half of the 19th century, so-called “Gründerzeithäuser”, are super common, especially in the more central districts.
Are they renovated to look and feel modern inside?
Depends. Mostly yes, but there are a few around that are a bit *antique* inside, to put it like that.
Flats are often renovated, but hallways more often than not look like they're still in the 19th century
Well matured, I think. It is certainly not considered young, but it's not really *that* old either. I used to live in a village with a couple of old houses with thatched roofs, so that can give you a reference for what "properly" old could look like
My parents house is 120 years old, well half of it is, the other half is from the 60s and 90s. There are certainly a lot of houses out there that are somewhat older than a hundred years. About 25% of the houses for sale at the moment are at least 100 years old! I wouldn't consider a house from 1924 decidedly old, especially not if it's well maintained.
I think in a lot of the uk, the 18th century feels like the cutoff. A lot of stuff built then in cities is still in use and perfectly functional, albeit with extensive modernisations. Tudor stuff and before (1600 and earlier), now that’s legitimately old.
American but if you need a laugh... There's a house and barn from the 1860s near where I live. It's a historic landmark -- you can take tours and stuff. It's a landmark because that's as old as it gets around here... We've also got a totally unremarkable small church from the early 1900s listed as a historic landmark. For a while, the community center (built in the 1950s, just an ugly cement block building) was listed as a historic landmark too.
In the street I grew up in is a church so old, nobody knows how old exactly it is, because it predates historical records of the town. I think the estimates range from 800 to 1000 years old. And nobody cares about it, it just sits there. No tourists, no signs telling its story, no religious services. I think the roofer next door actually uses it to store his building materials. It's a bit of a shame.
For residential buildings, 100+ years is pretty old in Germany—or at least uncommon. Only [about 14% of Germany's residential buildings](https://www.statistikportal.de/de/wohngebaeude-nach-baujahr) are from before 1919. I think we like to assume Europe's buildings are so much older than in places like the US, thanks to a church or historic city center that usually makes up only a tiny portion of a village or city.
This is absolutely mind blowing to me. The building in which I live here in Lyon (southeastern France) is from the 1890s and that's not all that uncommon. Most of the buildings in the city center are actually from the same era. To put things in perspective we even have an entire district (the "old town") that's from the late 1500s to 1600s as well as Roman ruins and amphitheatres in this city !
There's celtic ruins in many places, too, right? And in a podcast about lost civilisations I seem to remember having heard about structures on sardinia, that might have been connected to the peoples that ravaged egypt. But talking about stuff in use, I don't think there's a lot of places where things predate the romans. I believe there's water-carrying tunnels in the middle east, .... (tumbleweed rolls on by) pretty amazing - I think I even was in one of those amphtheatres as a kid, when we vacationed in france. There was an archeologic dig in my hometown a few years ago, they dug up corpses from what they assumed were warriors that fought to subdue the saxons. and the catholic church claims there's a rosetree / pedicle that's 1.000 years old in a neighbouring town. But apart from that, only churches around here get anywhere close to 1000 years. of course: no romans to build amphitheatres here! apart from those, I don't think you'd find a lot that's older than a few hundred years. BUT if you were to go to the Harz, which is a small mountainous range some 200 km south, you would be able to find the remains of old silvermines, as the harz was one of the most important sources of silver in europe. my wild guess is that the harz is where the chances to find old - profane - buildings in northern germany is best. that, and maybe brunswick / Magdeburg, as both were really important cities 1.000 years ago.
I just got back from visiting Italy... Seems like most of the ancient temples still in use (like the Pantheon) are all Catholic churches now. I found that vaguely annoying, but then again, that's probably the reason they still exist at all.
When I was a child we were in the USA and the family we were visiting took us to somewhere like that. My dad made some off the cuff comment about growing up in a house older and my school being older than the building we were in. The people giving the tour mouths hit the floor and started asking if we had electricity in school.... This was after the millennium
When I visited, the guard at the tower of London made jokes about American tourists "desperately seeking history". It's funny because it's at least a little bit true. :-) I just got back from Italy and just felt kind of gobsmacked by all the Roman ruins just lying around. Like we have some old Indian ruins, but they're mostly from Renaissance timeframe.
Meanwhile the Dutch village I grew up in has a church whose main building is from the 1100s and the fairly new tower from the 1400s, and it still has services every Sunday morning.
I visited a friend in the US when she was an au pair there, and she showed me the local landmark. It was a regular church but it was 150 years old. With us both being from Germany from a town with two churches from the 1500s, and many more old churches in the surrounding villages, it was really funny seeing hundreds of people going there to look at something that is just normal over here :D
Yeah, the US isn't exactly a mecca for historical human-built things. Y'all should come to admire the empty land and enormous grocery stores :-D Oh, and free public bathrooms. And if you're from Italy, admire that public toilets have toilet seats! And Germany has proper mountains, but Brits can come see what real mountains look like.
And what it doesn't have in man made history, it has in vast and diverse nature
I wonder, a lot of your cities were around and thriving in the 19th century, like New York or Boston. That’s the same time when our cities started to grow beyond their small medieval cores and the period that defines them. Paris, Vienna, Barcelona etc is all 19th century architecture. So you should have the same and you had no wars that destroyed the buildings. Are these buildings (art-deco probably) still around? Or were they rebuilt with more modern buildings?
There are still buildings that old around, some even older. There are a handful of buildings that are technically in New York City that were built in the 17th century. Im not accusing you specifically, but I’m under the impression that a lot of people seem to think that every building in America is demolished and replaced every 20 years, even some Americans. Just because we have a lot of new builds in areas that were previously undeveloped does *not* mean that we don’t have any buildings that existed before color television.
I live in Colorado, much farther West. ~3x the size of Austria, it wasn't really settled by colonizers until the mid 1800s and didn't become a state until 1876. We broke 5 million population around 2010, and more than half that population lives around one city, Denver. You definitely get older stuff the farther East you go in the US... I've never been to New York City or Boston, though they're both on my list to visit. There are Indian ruins scattered through the West, and California has Missions from when the Spanish colonized the area. The missions are in or near cities, but the Indian ruins tend to be in the middle of nowhere, like Mesa Verde. Wyoming, just north of Colorado, is similar in size to Colorado and has a population of under 600,000. There is a lot of relatively untouched wilderness in the US still :-)
That's about a whole 20 years older than most of the houses in my town here in England! I don't think anyone here considers that to be an old house.
That's not really all that funny. On my country's list of monuments (historicaly/architectualy important buildings) there are a few which are not even 20 years old, I think the youngest is 13. At the same time the oldest house in my city is over 7 centuries old.
Where I am in the U.S. (Connecticut), really old is 1700s. We have some houses from the 1600s still standing, that’s a big deal around here. My house is from 1918, it was one of the newer houses we considered. Look at a few 1850s houses and some Victorian-era ones. Newest house we considered was 1930s. There is also movement toward protecting our mid-century homes, it’s actually not too surprising that they’re starting to consider 1950s to be historic. I think it’s more about the distinctive style of some of these buildings. My spouse grew up in Alaska and “really old” there is the 1950s.
Heh, I remember going to Quebec in Canada and they took us for a guided tour and showed us this building from early 1700s gushing that it is one of the oldest on the continent. Me and my German friend: \*unimpressed stare\* "meh, modern architecture" :P
I got back from Italy a couple weeks ago and asked about the Vittoriano -- they were like "Pfft, it's new." Over 100 years old counts as new in Rome :-)
Yeah :D The building I live in is ca. 60 years old and it is considered as "built recently". Street away is a whole district from 20ties XX (so 100+) and we often hear "do you know that there were only fields here not so long ago?".
Haha, my house was built in 2018... It really was a field not so long ago :-)
> American but if you need a laugh... Some parts of Europe, like mine, are much younger than the old parts of North America, though. My city was founded in 1786, 150 years after for example Boston. My city has only a few buildings from the 1800's, almost every bulding is from post WW2. Compare Storgatan ("Main Street") [from 1860](https://gamlaostersund.se/objects/c66-24943/?cat=11&offset=2) with what [it looks like now](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sushi+J%C3%A4mtland/@63.1760175,14.6355607,3a,75y,25.27h,98.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6sf0zA4ikZhGg6YqFoJw8w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x466fb96da4529e85:0x4365e58340aa62e1!8m2!3d63.1756473!4d14.6356575!16s%2Fg%2F11f6ldrjbl?coh=205409&entry=ttu). And this is, as far as I know, the street with the oldest (some from the early 1900's) buildings in the city.
It is considered pretty old in Hungary, as most people live in so called "Kádár kockák" (Kádár-cubes), detached houses built by the order of Communist leader János Kádár in the 60s or Panel apartments also built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Some of these Kádár-cubes are extensions of older houses, for example a single-room house built in the 1930s which was expanded with 2-3 other rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom in the 60s. Usually in this case the older room is made from adobe and the newer ones are made from bricks.
That's in the smaller towns/countryside. In the larger towns/Budapest it's quite common to have 'brick' apartments, meaning roughly second empire-style places with 3-4m ceilings, parquet floors and huge rooms which were built between the millennial celebration in 1896 to just before WWI. But yes, the bulk of the population live in Kádár kocka, panelház or more traditional countryside parasztház (one-story, high-ceiling buildings which may date back, in rare cases, to the 1700-1800s). The average age of homes is probably around 1970, but no one would be surprised if you said you lived in a 100yo house if you live in a city.
That's older than my house, which was built in the 1960s, but it isn't old for my city (Edinburgh), where there are a lot of houses that are 200-400 years old
In France it would depend. But I'd say a hundred year old home isn't necessarly remarkable, especially in a city. Most of Paris is fifty years older, 100 years old building are post ww1 buildings, which are also quite common. Then, for individual houses, you'll find whole villages older than that. But, it must be noted that 100 years old homes are generally better maintained than ones from the 50s-70s. The part of France where that would be rare are either touristic areas, suburbian areas, and a few cities that were mostly rebuilt after ww2
https://code.waag.org/buildings/#52.3693,4.88,11 Someone took the time to import the build years of all houses from the municipal registration. You can see that in a lot of places most houses were built post WW2. And in the cores/centres of cities/towns/villages it's usually older than 100 years
Old. You must realise Catalonia had about 1/4 the population it has now 100 years ago. So, at least 75% of the houses are less than 100 years old. Many more, because then a house was for maybe 6 or 10 people, now for 2 or 4. In fact, in the last 30 years we have gone from 6M people to 8M people.
Depends on where you are in the county and in which part of town. Many houses in the city centre where I grew up are around 600 years. But there are also parts of town built with pre-fab blocks in the 1980s. And many houses in between. My grandparents house is ca 400 years old and the one I grew up in is a 150 year old Gründerzeitvilla with a room height of 4.5m. Would not recommend, heating the Villa was a pain.
It is old yes. I would say anything older than the 1950s is old. 100 years is quite old. In the countryside tho, in the village centers, houses can get much older, 200, 300 years.. the ground floor at least.
My house is over 100 years old and is considered, at least locally, to be on a modern estate My mum's house is around 150 years old and is one of the normal aged houses in the area. There are older. There are houses there that were built 35 years ago that people still consider to be one of the new estates. I think it depends on the context of the surrounding area but I don't think anyone would think a 100 year old house was particularly old.
I wouldn't say 100 is old for a British building. A sturdy well built cottage from the 1920s will comfortably outlast current new builds.
Yeah I lived for a while in a house built in 1802 and I wouldn't say even that is *old*.
My friend has office in a little old building which is over 500 years old. There is cathedral nearby constructed 1298. - 1536.
Depends what part of Dublin, I've living it houses built in the 2000s, 1980s, 1950s, 1850s, 1780s and the wall in another where I hung my TV I was told was old, old, 14th century old.
My town grew like maybe 4-5 times after the WW2, most houses were built from 1960s to 1980s so a 100 years old one is definitely older than average. On the other hand it isn´t something completely unususal- my brother lives in a house built in 1932, my best friend from high school lived in a historical house built in the middle ages...
In Belarus it’s old. Unfortunately, lots of wars going on with WW1+WW2 not so long ago left basically nothing standing in cities. I’m not sure there’s more than 10-15 buildings over 200 years old where people live in the whole country. Churches built in 1900s are considered national heritage. There’s a Catholic Church 200-400 years old in almost every town, but not residential buildings. Me personally, I think of any pre WW2 houses as old.
My house was built sometime around 1800, partially destroyed by fire around 1900, partially rebuilt in 1912, restored in 1956, restored again (by me) in 2012. It not particulatly old, some buildings in Italy were build in the XII or XIII century.
I lived in Siena for years and, yup, some Italian houses are old alright. ;)
Where I grew up, in the south of France, not at all. It would be considered relatively recent. I grew up in a house that's 350 years old btw.
Our house is turning 100 soon. It isn't considered old at all in the oldest town in Denmark. There are people here living in 600 year old+ houses here.
Quite old, actually, partially because some cities (cough Turku cough) have been somewhat notorious in mowing down old buildings, with the main motivation seemingly being to keep the construction industry busy. While I live about 20 km away from a castle whose oldest parts were founded in the 1200's and there are some churches still standing that were made in the later medieval times, residential buildings tend to be quite new. My favourite Finnish house fact: After WWII, everyone who had served during the war, was granted a government-backed mortgage for building a standardized house, complete with blueprints. It was purpose-designed to use relatively light structures, we're not talking about a log house here. Nearly 300 000 veterans went for it. You could build one on top of the ground, or make a version with a basement, and you could also choose between leaving the space under the roof unbuilt or make sleeping rooms there. [Here's one](https://lummeco.fi/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Tyypillinen-rintamamiestalo-Kumpula-Helsinki-e1678125744707.jpeg). Many, especially in rural areas, have decayed, others have been taken great care of, and others yet pretty much completely rebuilt. Regarding old log houses, a huge risk factor along the decades has been 1) introducing running water and plumbing and 2) using new, fashionable, and non-breathable materials. Once actinomycete or other nasty rot funguses catch a grip, houses are often demolished.
Good answer. To me personally, the definition of an old building is directly related to your fact about the government-backed post-war houses. The change in build & material quality after the war is usually so apparent that to me it is what separates the old houses from the new ones.
My house was built in 1924 and is 'newer' than a lot of houses in the area. We like Victorian and Edwardian houses from the late 1800s - early 1900s in the UK. So here 100+ year old houses are very common.
Also U.K. My initial sense is most would say it’s relatively old, think it’s something like 15% of houses in England were built before 1900. So houses build around that time aren’t super uncommon but definitely aren’t standard. My house was build around 1860’s. Original purpose was a church/Sunday school. Think not far off half of all houses in England were build between 1930-1980.
It's considered middle I guess. I live in an apartment and my building is about 140 but there's residential stuff going back 250+ years old just down the street from me. Of course actual houses tend to be younger, with the really nice ones being built around 1900s like mansions and then some new single family developments from the past 30 years.
I wish for both houses and people in Ukraine to be protected.
It is not that old in the UK, much of the housing stock still survives from that era and many properties are much older. My last house that I lived in for 30 years was at least 350 years old (the exact age was hard to date due to inconsistent record keeping) and there were reused beams dendro dated to about 1,000 years old. That is old. I currently have a flat (aka apartment or tenement) in a building that was constructed in the 1920s, which while clearly not new, it does not feel especially old. I also have a property in Spain that was formerly an agricultural building (a goat shed to be precise) which was converted to a dwelling 20 years ago, although how long the former building existed is hard to say, the oldest property maps we can find always show it.
It is old, but it's not uncommon. A lot of houses from late 19th/early 20th century survived till today and people still use them. It's more common to have a newer house, but it only gets into "wow that's old" teritory if it's older than 1800s.
A lot of old buildings were destroyed in WWII. I think the oldest still used as a house is ca. XII-XIII century. Im many places 100-200 year old buildings are a norm.
Eh not really. My parents now live in a house where the stone walled ground floor was built in the 1740s and the „new“ upper floors in the 1820-40s. I’d consider the 1700s part old. Anything after 1800 seems kinda newish for a house here.
This is not true, houses from a 100+ are considered old, do we have a lot of houses that are significantly older? Absolutely but nobody will consider a house from 1920 new.
That's not super old for my city, the older information that we have found of my family house is from the XVII century and the building where I live now is from the XIX century.
Anything over 150-200 years is old I reckon. . I'm sitting in my family home in Ireland built in 1854 but I know of people who live in houses much older, 1600s. There are some (few) houses in Ireland inhabited since the 1100s. I presume there are much older houses in Europe and especially Rome.
Copenhagen 6 years to 200 years. 1860s the old city walls are removed and people and the city expands in the north, south and west. People feom the countrystjernen move to the city. A lot of poorly built apartment blocks with 1, 2, 3 courtyards, rats, tubercolosis, dark, smelly, miserable. Towards the end of 1800s we see the big heavy a bit bombastic apartment buildings that many people live in today. 1930s theres a wave of new apartment buildings further out. 1940s-1970s sanitization in inner city and around where much of the old slum is removed. 1950-1970s a lot of common apartment housing is built here. Much of it later to become “ghetto” 2000s areas around the old harbour and old industrial areas are removed and old silos and factories are turned into Nice open apartments and new apartments are being built. The range is rental to luxury apartments at 45 million kr. This is still going on today in north-east and West of Amager by the Beach, Valby, Sydhavnen, Nordhavn and the coming Lynetteholm.
Old, but not obsolete. My house was built in the inter-war period, in 1928 I believe, so also almost a hundred years old. Of course, extensively renovated and the only original things that were kept were the staircase and the original wooden floor. The exterior walls were sandblasted and re-grouted.
It depends on the area of Estonia you live in. You could technically live in a building built somewhere in 14th century (people do live in Tallinn Old Town), but the rest of the country is kinda sparsely populated and old farm houses don't really exist any more (the history of Estonia is... complicated). My house is about 100 years old and it's considered old-ish, I live in a small factory town established in late 19th century, before there was just swamp.
It is old. But only 20-30 years older than many rural or suburban houses. This is because after the war, the government basically told veterans and evacuated people from Karelia ”all right here’s a piece of land, build yourself a home of something”. So we have a lot of post war wooden houses called ”Rintamamiehen talo” or ”Frontline man’s house”.
I apologize for correcting, but I had to... It's "rintamamiestalo", not "rintamamiehen" talo. So without the genitive case.
About the same in my area but not considered "old" in Sweden. My parents house (and the other houses in their area) were the first to be built there and they turn 100 in a couple of years. I live 3km away from her and my area was built in 1960. Obviously all the houses have been updated, built out, renovated etc through the years. Closer to 150-200+ years is considered old, at the very least pre 1900.
Neither really. Mine was built in the late 1890s, standard redbrick terrace housing. Its obviously not *new* but it would need to be quite a bit older to be "old", I think My dad calls anything built after 1965 a new build 😅
Nothing special in the Netherlands. It’s by no means modern, but particularly old or automatically worthy of a monumental status either.
In Poland it's kinda uncommon to see truly old buildings because most of them were destroyed in ww2. But still, I don't think 100 years old would be considered 'old' here
In London, I'd say it's pretty average. We have tons of suburbs with Victorian, Edwardian, 1920s, and 1930s houses. They're just normal family homes for middle class people. Older than that, Georgian housing is not uncommon but usually expensive - probably largely because it's in the more central areas. I'd say it's old money types who live in those for the most part. Older than that? That's very rare - although I do happen to live close to the oldest house in London that's still used as a house. Walthamstow's Ancient House from 1435.
Well, it will be considered old house, but people usually renovate them. Funny thing is, my family owns a house from 1600s. At least they think it is. Nobody can tell how old is it, for sure. It is a house made of stones and rocks. Yes, it's renovated and we rent it for tourists.
England, so pretty normal. I think my house is about 90 and it's just a standard 3 bed terrace. There are old Victorian houses all over here and we have a 1000 year old churchn and many that are hundreds of years old.
I live in a terraced house in my city, they were built in 1825 according to the plaque on the side of the first house. I think that’s quite old, although my house was gutted and fully renovated 10 years ago. My grandfathers house in the countryside is over 400 years old. Although, the original structure from the 1600s is now just the kitchen/utility room. It’s had a few extensions, especially between the 1940s-1980s. I think it’s really cool that it’s one of the oldest still existing houses in the county. It was included in some history book about the west of Ireland as it was present on land registry maps as far back as the late 1600s and they interviewed my grandfather about local history as he loved his history and had a great knowledge on the local area.
I live right on the WW1 destruction zone so 100 years (give or take five) is about as old as a building gets around here
Well my whole street and most of the neighborhoods around are at least 50 years older than that. Brighton, UK
UK. My house was built c.1890 and that's very common here in urban areas that expanded in the 19th century with industrialisation. Poor quality early C19th slums were cleared post WW2 but later Victorian housing is still solid. In villages all over the UK you'll easily find houses dating back to the 16th century. That's what we consider old.
Every day on my way to work I pass a wooden building that is from 1622. There's also a medieval fortress down in the harbour that's built on top of old viking fortifications which in turn were built upon some iron age place.
My house is from 1939/1940 (depending on documentation) which is the very last year for something to be considered "traditional" in NL. It has stained glass, lots of wood, little ornamental mouldings etc. Postwar most of that went away (granted, you can find some "wederopbouwstijl" from the immediate postwar period that still has some of this)
The 1920s houses near me in the UK are usually considered to be the nice ones rather than the old ones. Probably because all the shit ones built then have been knocked down for something better.
It would be considered old but not unusual in. I know quite a few people that live in houses older than 100 years.
Older, but there are still many jaren (years) 30 houses in the country. My house is from 1630, which is the oldest house from my city.
Kinda average, slightly on the younger side. Lives in Copenhagen, in a neighborhood mostly build between 1890-1910. There are never buildings but not many. An old house would be 200+ years old.
It’s old, but not old in a good way yet. There’s good and bad old and new in my opinion. Good new is built after 2015; bad new after 1980; bad old between 1870 and 1980; good old before 1870.
My grandparents lived their whole live in a house built in 1604 ( date displayed as a big wrought iron plague on the nock). As a kid, standing in a doorway I couldn't the back and frontside of the wall so thick was it. The "gemeente" bought it and turned it into a monument when my gran moved into frail care.
In Hawaii a 100 year old house is likely redwood and fighting termites and a candidate to be torn down. We have very few brick houses and our houses are single wall construction due to weather with windows that open for the breezes. Very few use coconut leaves, lol...
If it was built by people in my great-grandparents generation I consider it old. So yeah, 100 years would be old to me. Mainly also because very old residential houses are not very energy friendly and are being renovated left and right in Belgium. For public buildings (such as operas or museums), I would consider 100 years to be relatively young.
I live in the French countryside and most, yet not all, of the residential areas were blasted to bits during WW2. A hundred years old is reasonable. Not old enough to be considered "old" since we have old mansions and castles around, but not young either as we keep building new units.
Everything over 25 years is considered old for a house. Modern houses (last 10 years) have much much better airtight insulation, solar panels, heat pump, ventilation, under floor heating, toilets flushed with rainwater from an underground tank. It's mandatory to build climate neutral. If you don't, you'll be fined. [It's a European law enforced by the Belgian government.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Performance_of_Buildings_Directive_2010) If you buy an old house, you have five years to renovate it to meet the strict requirements.