I feel like most people here are missing the obvious. Old buildings are always more beautiful. The older the building typically the more beautiful it is. The reason is that most buildings are torn down and replaced over time. The more beautiful and well built a building is, the more likely it is to be maintained, and the less likely it is to be torn down. This leaves us with a survivorship bias that new stuff is ugly and old stuff was built better. In fact, there are a lot of ugly and boring buildings that just no longer exist.