[ScottFree]

It depends on where in the city the building was built. 1908 is just a few years after the great quake of 1906. Houses and buildings were built very quickly during an era of non-existent building codes.

I lived in one in the Tenderloin for a few years. It needed a lot of TLC and was horribly maintained. Nobody wanted no spend the money to keep it looking nice. That's one of the downsides to the architecture of the era. The building was gorgeous, but even just properly cleaning it took an extra effort the landlord wasn't willing to pay for.