Yes, well, I think there are a number of orchestras which, while they have had ups and downs, are up almost all the time and have been for a long time. Among them are NYPO, Boston, Chicago, and arguably Philly in the US, and, in Europe, the Concertgebouw, Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, and, arguably, the Czech Phil.
Chicago is the one I know most about, as I was born there and lived in that area until 2002. Many people mistakenly think that Georg Solti was the first great music director there. Others, a bit more sophisticated, will acknowledge the greatness of Fritz Reiner's leadership there. But the CSO had at least two great MDs before Reiner--Theodore Thomas, the founder of the orchestra in the 1890's, and Frederick Stock, who succeeded him. Thomas staffed the orchestra entirely with German musicians. It has to be said that America had not yet the educational institutional infrastructure to staff orchestras itself. But the CSO had its first guest conductor in 1904--none other than Richard Strauss, a friend of Theodore Thomas's, and Arthur Schnabel thought enough of the CSO and Frederick Stock that he recorded the last two Beethoven Piano Concerti with them even after he had already done the complete set with Sir Malcolm Sargent in the 1930's.
What Solti did was very important, though. He brought in the big bucks. When he took over, the CSO was the only one of the Big Five American orchestras without either a Brahms or a Beethoven symphony cycle on the market. Solti marched the orchestra pretty systematically and almost ruthlessly through much of the standard repertoire and did big box after big box--the Beethoven symphonies twice, the Beethoven piano concerti, the Brahms symphonies, the Mahler symphonies, and made the CSO a commercial force to be reckoned with.