REAL  ESTATE  RECORD.





faded have been picked out. In this age it
wa^ employed in the construction of the harbor
at pover and the breakwater in Brighton. Its
great strength was recently shown by subject¬
ing a smaU piece, three feet in length, eleven
inches deep, and four and a half inches thick,
to a pressure of thirty-six hundred weight.
The result w.as entirely satisfactory. It is not
probable, however, that it wiU come into gene¬
ral use unless it can be shown to be far cheaper
than bricks. To insure its success two points
must be insured: the foundations must be
properly secured, and equal care must be taken
in mixing the material. The use of concrete
for floors is considered desirable, but many
authorities in the matter consider iibs utiUly for
roofing questionable. It is right to state, how¬
ever, that one gentleman warrants that a con¬
crete roof, only two inches in thickness, wUl
remain water-proof for ten years. A buUder
may object to using this material, as it requires
an addition of machinery to his plant, and also
to some extent skUled labor. It is maintained,
however, that very little experience wiU make
an intelligent workman competent to prepare
concrete properly, and that the machinery wiU
more than repay its cost in cases where six or
more houses are erected. The rough appear¬
ance of a concrete building wUl have to be con¬
cealed by ornamental tiles, or stucco work.





BROOKLYN NEWS,

The new steam pumping engine, which is
about to be constructed at Ridgewood, is to be
very highly ornamented, and will have a capa¬
city for raising ten miUion gallons of water in
sixteen hours. Four bids were received in aU
for the work, viz.:

Messrs. Rogers & CarroU, New York, $185,000
Messrs. Woodruff & Beach. Hartford, 175,700
Proprietors of the AUaire Works, N. Y,, 147,500
Messrs.Hubbard & \Vhittaker,Brooklyn,129,750

There is a very wide difference in the bids.
Messrs H. & W.'s being .$55,250 lower than the
highest, and §27,750 below the next lowest
bidder. Messrs. Hubbard & Whittaker will
undoubtedly get the job, as they are in addition
to being the lowest bidders, residents of Brook¬
lyn. They state that they have ample facili¬
ties for doing the work, and are ready to give
all the necessary security for the fulfiUment of
the contract. It wUl take about fifteen months
to finish the work.

The Common CouncU has directed the
ComptroUer to seU at auction to the highest
bidder, the property belonging to the city, com¬
prising over four full lots on Myrtle avenue,
between Canton and Hampden streets. The
city has had a clear title to it for the last thirty
years. It has hitherto been occupied by
squatters.

The Assessment Committee of the Board of
Aldermen have taken up the petition of Rosetta
BedeU, a daughter of the late John Jackson,
which represents that the petitioner is the
owner of 71 lots of ground on the Jaclcson
Farm, In the Seventeenth ward, and that the
expenses attending upon the nonpayment for
many years of city taxes and assessments upon
the property are so enormous that she wUl not
be able to pay them, unless the city wiU con¬
sent to receive the taxes only, without default
or interest. The Committee agreed to report
favorably on the application.

NtcnoLAS WvrcKOPP, Esq. , President of the
WU^amsburg City Bank has offered to cede to
the ^ity the gore of land on Broadway, between
Throop avenue and Gwinnett street, on the
condition that no buUding should ever be
creeled on it, but that it should be maintained
as op open space at the continuance of the
aboTO named streets. The Committee of the
Aldejrmanic Board for opening streets have
resolved to report in favor of the city accept¬
ing ;he cession.

Ii r cansequence of the objection of the resi-
denls on Brooklyn avenue, the route of the
new railroad from WUUamsburg to Prospect
Par':, has been changed so that on leaving
Toe (pkins avenue it wiU continue on through
Full on avenue to Hudaon avenue, thence along





Hudson avenue to to East Warren street, and
so on to the Park.

Several extensive sales of property are
recorded in our Brooklyn transfers of this week.
Among the most important are one block of 46
lots, bounded by Washington, MUton, L sts.
and E. River, purchased by Sir. Jno. Englis
from W. Smith, price §91,000 ; a piece of
property on Myrtle ave., 20.6 e. of Ryerson st,
sold for $76,120, purchased by EUen Feam
from V. G. HaU; on South 5th st., s. s., 35 ft
w. of 5th st., the property belonging to Meth.
Epis. Church, was sold to the Central Meth.
Epis. Church for $20,000.





DOMESTIC ITEMS.

The winter has been very favorable for Minne¬
sota lumbermen. The cut of logs, this season,
is estimated at 70,000,000 feet—38,000,000 on
Rum River, and 32,000,000 on the llississippi.

In the week ending March 14, the sales of
real estate in Chicago footed up $757,098,
probably the largest week's work on the city
records.

Lawrence, Mass., is said to be architectur¬
ally one of the most imposing cities in New
England.

Rents in LouisviUe have declined more thin
twenty-five per cent, this spring, and yet there
are many untenanted dwellings in the city.

The Kankakee (lU.) Gazette says 500 new
buUdings wiU be erected in that place the com¬
ing season.

The real estate changes in LouisvUle last
week amounted to $260,000. In New Albany
(Ind.) they were $10,288.

Illinois imported enough lumber last year
to buUd a three board fence twice around the
world and once around herself.

Twenty-two thousand doUars have been
subscribed toward the erection of a new Wes-
leyan University at Bloomington, HL The
buUding is to cose $50,000.

The Albany papers complain that real estate
in that city is declining in value. A house that
was sold about a month ago for $5,025 was re¬
sold Friday for $4,500. In Troy the value of
real estate is going up all the whUe.

Some statistician has counted 42 btdldings
in course of erection in New Albany, Ind.

The Mutual Benefit BuUding Association, of
HamUton, Ohio, filed its certificate of incorpor¬
ation on Friday. The object is to raise money
to be loaned among the members for securing
homesteads. The capital stock is $400,000,
divided into shares of .$200 each.

A quarry of fine building stone has been
discovered on Bulger Creek, 26 mUes west of
Des Moines, Iowa, on the Une of the Chicago,
Rock Island and Pacific rqad. It is said to be
equal to the best stone yet developed in the
State, and of inexhaustible quantity.

A new method of making white lead has
been discovered. The metaUic lead is first
granulated, and then placed in a barrel of
beech or hornbeam wood (not oak) ^vith one-
fourth its weight of pure water. The barrel
is made to rotate about 30 or 40 times in a
minute, a current of air passing through at the
same time. After the lapse of several hours,
the lead wUl all be oxidized, when a current of
carbonic acid is to be substituted, and the
rotation continued some hours longer. At the
end of this time all the lead ■wiU be found con¬
nected ^vith the pure hydrated carbonate, the
true white lead, and can easily be separated
from any unoxydized metal and washed and
dried.

Th.\t valuable piece of property in South
Carolina, known as the Kalmia MiUs, including
4,259 acres of land, was sold on Saturday, in
Charleston, to the Messrs. Langley, of New
York, for $140,000.

The cost of the original capitol at Washing¬
ton City was $1,400,000. The additions, now
nearly completed, will cost $12,000,000.

During the ten months last past upwards of
fifteen hundred persons in Yirginia have been
declared bankrupts.

The master buUders of Hartford, Connecti¬
cut, have repudiated the Bricklayers and Plas¬





terers' Union, and will not hire men belonging
to it.

The new Canadian public buildings at Ot¬
tawa, the capital of the domioion, it is reported,
have already cost $2,745,013, and they are not
yet completed. To finish them, $500,000 more,
it is said, wUl be required.

The bankrupt law has now been in operation,
about nine months, and during that period
there have been filed in New York 3,000 peti¬
tions ; in Massachusetts, 825 ; and in Pennqrl-
vania, over 1,300,

The dirty blue color so frequently seen on
dead wood, has been found to depend npon a
new coloring matter caUed xylindein, which is
produced by a kind of fungus.

The lumber season in Maine is reported to
have been universaUy good. More logs were
cut and hauled in February than in whole win¬
ters for many years past.

In Cedar County, Mo., mines of copper and
antimony have been discovered. Rich deposits
are expected.

The Minneapolis (Mum.) Trilnme says the
lumber trade is opening briskly this spring.
The home demand is large, and heavy orders
are dauy received from points along the lines
of the different raUroads.

The aggregate buUding improvements in To¬
ledo for the past year are estimated at two
mUUons, an increase over the previous year of
one miUion. The aggregate number of build¬
ings erected during the year were 1,328, an in¬
crease over the previous year of 867. The city
has a population of 31,651.





FOREIGN ITEMS.

The Paris Observatory.—The question
of the expediency of removing this important
establishment to some more eligible place is
now engrossing the attention of the Academy
of Sciences.

The total quantity of gold exported from
New Zealand from the year 1853 to 1866, in¬
clusive, was 3,059,451 oz.; chrome ore, 5,306
tons, 3 c\vt., 3 grs.; coals, 290 tons: copper
ore, 3,374 tons, 8 cwt.; iron sand, 161 tons,
13 cwt.; plumbago, 7 tons.

At a recent meeting of the Clyde Tmstees,
held in Glasgow, it was resolved to ask for
borrowing powers to the extent of £600,000 in
the bUl for the formation of a new Graining
Dock, which the trustees intend to bring before
ParUament.

A L.VRGE new cotton factory is about to be
erected in the neighborhood of Qnebec, at a
cost of $300,000, and giving employment to
fuUy 3,000 workmen.

A NEW line of telegraph is shortly to be laid
from the Tyne to Denmark.

A Railway Carriacje, mo\'ing \vith a fric¬
tion 61b. per ton, would, if set in motion at
the top of a straight plane falling 100 feet, and
connecting at the bottom with a straight level
line, runs a little more than seven miles by its
gravity alone.

The Pivot Bridge .at the cros.sing of the
Alexandria and Cairo Railway and the Nile is
100 feet long, giving two openings of 60 feet
each. There arc two iron pivot bridges, one
at Chicago and one at Galena, which are each
230 feet long, giving two openings of nearly 100
feet each.

Although the roadw.ay of the new West¬
minster Bridge is of great -\\-idth, it is not, as
has been stated, the widest of any bridge in
the world. The Schloss Brucke, at Berlin, has
a much greater width of roadway ; as has also
the new bridge by which the Boulevard Sebaa-
topol is carried across the Seine, in Paris.

Authenticated facts justify the belief that
marine steam-engines wUl yet be worked Avith an
expenditure of lib of coal per horse-power per
hour. In this case, a ves.sel like the Great East-
em, working 12,000 effective horse-power, cotild
run seventy days, or to Australia and back,
mth 9,000 tons of coal, being at the rate of
128 tons a day.

When iron, arsenic or antimony are exposed
to the vapor |of bromine they enter upon com¬
bustion.