You're quite right on both size of buildings and also survivorship bias! Although the prevalence of old housing across the UK suggests (to me at least) that so

You're quite right on both size of buildings and also survivorship bias! Although the prevalence of old housing across the UK suggests (to me at least) that something systematic has changed. The fact that people can have an obsession with tudor, georgian, Victorian style housing tells me that things were built to last in a way that might be less true today. As you say, the technology to build so high is a recent one, I note the Empire State Building is only 80 years old which is pretty young when compared against Notre Dame for example