Personally I find that going into a standard cookie-cutter instance of a franchise is depressing; they're usually built with pleasing aesthetics low on the list of priorities, far below "cheap", "easy to hose down", and "does not encourage customers lingering". Going into one that's been shaped by a place with an aesthetic agenda results in something that's got a few surprises, and has design flourishes that exist so…
Honest question: why do you think that the older buildings didn't "maximize profit" for their creators?
Just look at any of those wrought iron railings. From a purely functional viewpoint they could do their job of being a railing to stop you from falling off the balcony with a series of plain vertical bars. But they are these elaborate concoctions of decoration and detail that someone had to cast, bend, and shape. You'll find similar aesthetic choices made throughout the city; a lot of houses have wrought iron bars over their windows to deter breakins, and very few of them are the simplest, cheapest design possible, for instance.
I am quite sure these buildings have made a profit; hell, the ones in the French Quarter are a big part of the modern tourist economy that draws people and money from all over. But there are a lot of details all over that serve purely to make the buildings pleasing to live and work in, which tend to be the first thing to go in modern architecture driven entirely by maximizing profits (and also still in love with the inhuman brutalist visions of people like Le Corbusier, when it comes to building housing).