112i





The   Record   and   Guide.





September 3, 1887





parks in the annexed district—they do not at present need any
costly manipulation. They will be recreation grounds for years
to come that will not involve large expenditure. Indeed, the
present generation of editors and landscape gardeners will have
passed away before any money will be needed to improve the
recreative resorts north of the Harlem.





No. 27 Lafavette Place.

A variation upon the common run of our street architecture, if
our street architecture can at present be said to have any common
run, has just beeu executed at the place noted above, in a front of
some architectural pretension and interest. It is the work, we
believe, of Messrs. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, aa might per¬
haps be inferred from its appearance by those who are familiar
with the buildings recently erected for Grace Church, and, aa might
also be surmised by such persons, it is one of the monuments of
the late Miss Wolfe's munificence, being intended, it is understood,
as the Episcopal residence of the diocese of New York. Perhaps it
is to its destination as a bishop's palace that some of the palatial
features in its architecture are due. There is no doubt about there
having been a common run of NewYork architecture at the time
when Lafayette place was built up. Until within a few years the
residences of that no-thoroughfare were very typical of the archi¬
tectural notions that prevailed among our respected parents. The
Astor Library was a new departure, being about the first specimen
seen here of the revival of Romanesque architecture,' after the
example of Gartner in Munich. The Library looks tame enough
now, and indeed was at all times a demure and well-behaved edifice,
though ita modelling and detail were unfamiliar when they were
erected in a city that haa now many better examples of German
Romanesque. The common run is exhibited in such of the solid
old dwellings aa are still left, with their aspect of perfectly unpreten¬
tious comfort and their sparing classic ornament carefully detailed.
The more aspiring efforts ot the same period are shown in the
Colonnade, whose long rows of Corinthian columns are undeniably
impressive, and give the front a harmony and elegance that we
miss in later attempts to treat uniformly a long row of dwell¬
ing houses. Of course the architecture has as little as possible to
do with the houses, and their windows are mere impertinences in
the composition. It is not at all what our designers have to do, but
it is what they have not to do very well done, and so not without
its usefulness. Of later innovations in the street the big, bald
brick printing house of De Vinne, affectedly bald and quaint, and
not successful as a harmonious composition, is the only one that
deserves notice.

The new building is a piece of pronounced Gothic, and the
domestic Gothic of the Middle Ages, the revival of which is well
within the memories of the middle-aged, already begins to look a
little bygone and old-fashioned, thanks to Queen Anne and other
domesticities, the day of which has been even briefer. But then
a style in which generations of artists have worked, and in which
great things have been done, can never become so obsolete as a
style in which nobody in particular has worked and nothing in
particular has been done. This house, moreover, reproduces the
impression of that Venetian Gothic which Mr. Ruskin used to laud
so eloquently before he took to scolding less eloquently the makers
of all other architecture. It is a mere front, and not a wide front,
like many of the best of the Venetian palaces. This is 40 feet wide
and in four stories, over a rather high basement, with no visible
roof. The basement and first story are of Westchester marble, the
upper three stories of cream-colored brick, relieved by a darker
brownish brick at the angles and in the arches, and by a brown
sandstone, or possibly terra cotta, in the labels and tympana of the
arches, in the main cornice, and in a string course under the fourth
story. Tbe " high stoop" ia dissembled by an approach through
two flights of a broad marble staircase, witb a broad landing at the
turn. The main feature is a rather shallow bay window, about a
third the width of the front, running through the first and second
stories, of marble in the first and brickwork in the second, and
carried upon three stout corbels projected from the basement wall,
and connected by segmental arches that are hooded over the base¬
ment windows. In the first story this bay wiudow has a group of
three pointed arches, sprung from square piers at the aides and
columns in the centre, the shafts of polished granite with marble capi¬
tals and bases. Their heads are filled with tracery, not ramifying
from mullions but resting on Ught transoms, and framing stained
glass. The mam doorway and a window alongside of it are similarly
treated—that is, with tracery over the transoms filled with stained
glass, although in these the hood moulding is carried out in a
Gothic finial. It is the arcade and this arrangement of tracery
that gives the front its Venetian aspect, for the detail is not at all
Italian in character, rather French. The tracery is not bad in
itself, but this arrangement of tracery, unless it be a mere perfora¬
tion of a solid screen in the window head, always has an awkward
and interrupted look. The tracery that fills the area railing and
the railing of a balcony projected over the first story as far as the





projection of the bay window is much better, being a flamboyant
distortion of foiling, and accommodating itself much more grace¬
fully to the slope of the stairs than either a colonnade or an arcade
would have done. In the supports of the balcony, which is an
effective feature, the style is abandoned altogether, for the balcony
rests upon consoles that are distinctly of the Renaissance in form
and detail. The moat vigorous and expressive piece of work in all
this marble substructure is the corbelling of the bay window, which
is extremely straightforward and satisfactory.

On the whole the substructure is better than the brickwork
above. The second story haa four rectangular windows, with seg¬
mental arches over them, in brick with stone labels, and the heads
are filled with panels apparently of terra cotta. The third story
has four openings aligned over these, but these are rather steep
pointed arches, though the windows themselves are again rectan¬
gular and the heads are filled as before. Above this story runs a
moulded aud enriched string course dividing the front into three
main parts—the marble basement, the two intermediate stories and
the upper story. This upper story is a series of pairs of small
arched openings, four in all, each aligned over one of the large
windows below. Each pair is divided by a granite shaft at the
centre, from which are turned the low arches, not segmental but
two-centred. Over this is a rather heavy and not very successful
cornice of mixed classic and Gothic, that would have been improved
by the omission of its frieze, decorated with uninteresting and con¬
ventional Gothic gablets.

This is emphatically one of the works of art to which we may
apply the Vicar of Wakefield's safe criticism, that it would have been
better if the artist had taken more pains. The combination of
material is not so successful as it is novel. White marble cannot
be safely used as the basement to a darker superstructure. As it
is used here it aggravates the chief fault of the design, that it is
lightest and richest at the bottom and heaviest and solidest at the
top. A basement of sandstone, of the same color as that used
above, or perhaps still better of Caen stone, would have made a
more harmonious effect. If with such a choice of material the
architect had carried out the Venetian suggestion of his front by
reducing the apparent height of his third story, and developing
the fourth into one of those arcades with traceried spandrils that are
among the most charming features of the Venetian palaces, he
would have produced a street front as picturesque and elegant as it
is striking. We feel ungrateful for quarrelling with him about
what he has done, seeing it is so agreeable a variation from most
of the new work in domestic architecture. But, then, it might so
easily have been made so much better.





Real Estate Business for Eight Months Past.

Last week we pointed out the heavy increase in real estate trans¬
actions and new buildings for the past year and seven months
compared with previous years. This week we give the figures for
the month of August, just past, which shows a falling off
compared with the August of last year, although the eight montha
of 1887 are considerably ahead of the corresponding months of 1886.

There is evidently no unwholesome *'boom" in real efc tate in
New York and vicinity as yet. It may come, for the land buying
mania is spreading all over the country, though as yet it has not
made its appearance in any exaggerated way east of the
AUeghanies.

One unfavorable sign is the increase of mortgage indebtedness.
There were fewer transactions in real estate in August, 1887, com¬
pared with August, 1886, but there were more mortgages in the
former year than in the latter, and the aggregate indebtedness was
greater. There were only 230 projected new buildings during the
past month, against 298 during the August of last year. There
was a falling off, comparing the same two months, of over $900,000
in the proposed expenditure for new structures. The principal
decrease is on the east side and the central portions of the city.
The west side and the annexed district seems to be gaining.

Of course it should be borne in mind that many of the new
buildings which are projected will never be commenced, nor will
there be the money outlay that figures in the plans. Builders who
construct to sell are apt to over-estimate the sums required to carry
their projects through. But here are the figures for August, also
for the first eight months of this year. They should be carefully
analyzed by every one interested in real estate:












CONVByANCKa.




















1887.             Conveys.
Jan.-July inc..    9,■^31
August.......       699




Amount.
$179,629,103
12,764.971




Nom.

1,637

134

1,771




23d & 24th W.   Amount.

1,588        $7,338,654
163              715,164

1,741         $8,053,818




Nom

275

16





Total...... 10,030




$192,394,074




293





1886.






























Jan.-July,inc.    S,7e3
August.......       712




$162,243,653

11,494,678




1,486
118




1,152
129




$4,495,295
383,252




180
18





Total......    9,495




$173,737,330




1,604




1,281




$4,878,547




198





1885.






























Jan.-July, inc,   7.045
August........       600




$117,375,802

8,464,205

$135,840,007




1,559
138

1.697




872
110

983




$2,502,636
247,631)




207
81





Total......    7,645




$2,840,2ti6




SS8