Yes. We now use engineering standards to design houses. Looking at 100 year old houses as an engineering is enlightening (you don't even have to be a good engineer, just look and think). Old houses are often way over built in places where there is no stress and so paper would work - but those places are visible. Meanwhile places that do matter are often under built and it is amazing they are still standing at all - but those places tend to be not easily seen. Which is while people say modern houses are built from cardboard - in many ways they are - but those are all places where strength isn't needed so why waste money.

What you won't see in the above is things that are hidden. Modern code requires you to have a firestop in all walls every 10 feet - old houses were often balloon framed which means the inside of the walls becomes a chimney in a fire and will help feed the fire. New houses the inside of walls do not become a chimney because of that fire stop.

Modern houses also are insulated to much better standards. Something else that often isn't seen but makes a big difference. Even when it is seen nobody thinks about it - those old windows the article is singing the praises of are universally single pane windows that should have been scrapped 40 years ago. Sure there frame is still like new, but the standards for new back then are not acceptable.

The bigger lesson to take from the above: don't build to last too long. What people want out of a house changes over time, and you never correctly anticipate what people will want in the next decade. Eventually that old house will have enough things "wrong" that cannot be retrofitted and the best thing to do is tear down and rebuild from scratch to modern standards.