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RECORD AND   GUIDE.





June 28, 1902.





The Realty League is such an association. Us membership is
at present composed of some of the most active and public-
spirited brokers, aud builders and unprofessional owners of real
property and their representatives in the city; but this member¬
ship ■!vill undoubtedly increase and broaden according as its
work becomes effective and popular. And it can only become
effective and popular by the adoption of a liberal and energetic
policy This policy should have at least two main purposes-
distinct, but equally important. The first of these should be to
protect local and particular real estate interests against official
neglect, ignorance, or extortion. It should urge necessary im¬
provements, sci-utinize their cost, and in every possible way
make the city officials realize that they are being rigorously
held up to their work by the agents of a representative and
powerful association. The second purpose should be the larger
one of trying to make the municipal policy of the Greater New
York as far-sighted and efficient as possible. It should put the
same test to a regenerate as to an unregenerate municipal ad¬
ministration. Has that administration spent the money con¬
tributed by the property-owners with honesty, economy and wis¬
dom? We are well aware that this is not the whole question of
municipal governmentt; but it is the question in which tax¬
payers are most interested, and it is the question, which in spite
of much newspaper talk is never seriously and intelligently put.
The other aspects and opportunities of our local government
receive the close attention of many men and many associations;
but the business aspect has no special and persistent representa¬
tive and advocate.   That is the opportunity and tbe work of the

Realty League.

------------•------------

ANOTHER draft pay-window ordinance has been introduced
into the Board of Aldermen and is now awaiting
action by that body. This is intended, while providing regula¬
tions for the construction of bay, oriel or show windows, to re¬
move the objections, or some of the objections to the ordinance
drafted for the same purpose and reviewed in these columns
some time ago. It will be remembered that the position of af¬
fairs is this: According to tbe legal advisers of the City the
charter requires that permits for projections in the street shall
only be granfed under a general ordinance, and that fees shall
be charged therefor. The disclosure of this fact coupled with
the additional fact that the Board of Aldermen have not framed
a general ordinance is delaying a number of building operations
in the City because, until such ordinance bas been passed, the
Building Bureaus cannot approve plans. The ordinance now
offered to the Board of Aldermen for their approval, recognizes
the right of the Park Department to issue permits for bay win¬
dows in, and within a distance of 350 feet from a park, square
or public place, and make the Commissioners of Public Works
the issuing authorities elsewhere. It requires that the consent
of property-owners within a distance of flfty feet on each side
shall be first obtained and endorsed upon the application for the
permit. The amount to be paid for the privilege is fixed at "not
less than one dollar, and not more than flve dollars, for each and
every square foot or fraction thereof of area covered by the
window beyond the building line and every story through which
it is carried, the rate to be based upon the assessed value of the
property as conflrmed by the City authorities." To apply these
charges it is provided that: "The Commissioners of Public
Works and the Park Commissioners shall divide the City into
districts, throughout which, in each district, the rate per square
foot shall be uniform, the maximum rate being charged where
tbe assessed valuation per square foot is the greatest, and the
minimum rate where the assessed valuation per square foot is
the least; the intermediate rates being proportioned accord¬
ingly." Construction is to comply with the Building Code, and
regulations are framed for cases of reconstruction, the super¬
vision and control of the issuing of permits and penalties for
any violaton of their terms, etc.





property-owner—the taxpayer—who directly provides six-sev¬
enths of the municipal income, cannot have the smallest privil¬
ege without being asked to pay handsomely for it. In this case,
for instance, while an extension window is admittedly a great
advantage to the property, it can be built, under proper regula¬
tions, not only without injuring anyone, but to occupy space
that cannot in any conceivable way be occupied by anything
else. Therefore, to make more than a nominal charge for the
privilege of building the window is to use the powers granted by
the charter to impose a special and discriminating tax upon par¬
ticular properties. In principle this is wrong. Owners have so
far not complained of charges for bay-windows where they have
been imposed, but they will surely do so if this ordinance, which
so extends the system of charging for them, should pass. The
Board of Aldermen have the matter in their hands, because, if
the charter does require them to flx a fee for the privilege, It
leaves them entirely free to say what shall be its amount.





IT will be noticed that it is still intended to include all window
projections within the scope of the ordinance and that pay¬
ment would, after its passage, have to be made for bay-windows'
outside of the jurisdiction of the Park Department and for show-
windows everywhere for which hitherto no payment has been
made. In tbis way it is probably thought, and, in fact, would be
the case, that a respectable addition to the public revenue could
be raised. An attempt is made to reach an equitable basis for
the charges by distributing them to some extent according to tax
valuations, but would it not be better to make no charge at all
beyond a nominal fee to cover the cost of issuing tbe permit?
It is a remarkable thing how anxious public offlcials are to wring
every cent possible from real estate. A carrying or a trading
coi-poration can, or could obtain the most valuable privileges
from the City without anything like adequite payment, but the





The  Real Estate Situation.

The conditions prevailing in the private sales market, as far
as the published reports reveal them, are almost those of mid¬
summer.    What few investors tbere were have almost entirely
disappeared,  and  the   little   business  that  is
being   done   is   by   the   individual   operator.
The Arrival    Even   the   realty   corporations  have   stopped
of             buying.    The purchase this week  by W.  W,

Summer.        & T, M.  Hall, of the Clark lots on Seventy-
third and Seventy-fourth Streets, west of Cen¬
tral Park 'West, is the one particular interest¬
ing item of news; in fact, brokers and owners on the West Side
are pointing to it as the forerunner of a movement in that sec¬
tion, such as the East Side has had this spring, with this differ¬
ence, that they think the buying will be for occupancy and not
for speculative building.    If such a movement does take place it.
will  undoubtedly  be  sustained  by  intending residents,  as  the
operators have long since forsaken the section, and  the only
thing they will touch at tbe present time is lots, and these must
be  available for  improveraents  with  apartments.    One of the
largest operators stated not long since that private houses on
the West Side were being almost given away.    To come back to
the Hall purchase, the lots are certainly the best ones left in the
section suitable for improvements with private houses;  in fact,
the ouly others nearly as desirable are those from Eighty-fifth
to Eighty-Sixth Streets, just west of Central Park West, owned
by the Clark Estate.    Then, again, Mr. Clark is erecting for in- i
vestment   eighteen   high   class   dwellings   on    Seventy-fourth]
Street adjoining the lots bought by the Halls, and it may be con-]
fidently assumed  that they will  be- rented only to a very de-j
sirable class of tenants, thus making a choice neighborhood audi
one in which it should not be hard to dispose of a half a dozeiq
good houses.    The other transactions raake public are the usual'
kind heard of at this season and are hardly worth special men¬
tion.    One has been closed in the lower section involving seven
figures, to which title will pass on June SOth, and which we are
not at liberty to make public;  this, however, is a transaction
closed a month ago and can hardly be figured in the present
business.





The construction of private dwellings in Manhattan has been
controlled   by   very   different   tendencies   during   the   flrst   six
months of this year compared to the same period in 1901; and
the purchase.of W. W, & T. M. Hall of six lots
on 73rd & 74th Sts., for the purpose of erect-
Dwellings     ing residences thereon calls attention to these
on the       changes.    It cannot be said, indeed, that this
■West Side,   purchase foreshadows an immediate return on
the part of the speculative builders of private
houses to the West Side as their field of opera¬
tions, for the area of speculation on tbe West Side in such build¬
ings is extremely restricted.    Tbe present operation seems to be
a shrewd attempt to take advantage of the interest iu expensive
private houses in that vicinity which will be caused by the erec¬
tion of 18  dwellings on 73rd St., for investment by the Clark
estate.    But   the   operation   is   also  Indicative   of  the   fact,  to
which the fllings for the last six months in the Building De¬
partment plainly testifies, that speculative builders are a little
afraid  under  existing  conditions to  undertake  any  additional
operations on the East Side.    During 1901 plans were flled for
fully thirty-flve expensive residences, on locations to the south
and east of the Central Park, which would subsequently be of¬
fered for sale.    Most of these residences have come upon the
market this spring, and while some few of them have been sold,
enough of them have remained unsold to make it inadvisable to
further increase the supply in that part of the city.    The conse-