I heard a story - I don't know if it's true - that when the Chrysler building was under construction, the lower floors they occupied were built around their requirements because their rents would pay for the floor above to be built.

A building lifespan of 50-80 years seems excessively short, though - that's less than a person's lifetime.

I live in England, in a house that, at 40 years old, would be called "modern". The pub down the road is 400 years old, and the church down the road was built nearly 1000 years ago.

HBR wrote an article about the difference between companies that last and those that don't, and the information tracks. A company I used to work for was founded in about 1913 as an autonomous business unit of an organisation that predates the Aztec Empire.

The culture there was just like in the article: people stayed in roles for a long time, side hustles and work placements were common, there were all sorts of "expert" collaborative groups, and standards were extremely high. It all tracks.

https://hbr.org/2018/09/how-winning-organizations-last-100-years