Houses today are vastly larger. Cost/sq ft in all but the few most expensive places has been nearly constant under inflation adjusted price for an incredibly long time. A huge majority of the population lives in such places.
Prices change due to inflation among other things, which is over 50 % from that time period. And given that the median house age (not median age of sold house!) is 40 years, you did buy a much newer house than the majority of people have.
A few years back, median age of sold house was 27 years. So by that metric you bought even a newer house than the majority of house sales.
Your 1997 house is almost certainly much larger than the median 1950 house.
And, your single data point in no way invalidates aggregate statistics.
Here's a size list that is commonly shared https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes...
When you figure in # of people in such houses, the avg person has vastly more space https://www.reddit.com/r/REBubble/comments/14hayqq/average_h...