AND   BUILDERS'   GUIDE.





Vol. I.   No. 1.] _ . ;.   ...

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SATURDAY, MARCH 21^ 1868.







[Pj?ice 10 Cents.





SAIUTATOBY.

It is quite time that New York City should
have a newspaper devotpd to real estate and
building matters. The history of newspapers
in the metropolis for the last fifteen years
sliQ-vvs that journals established to represent
great industrial enterprises have never failed,
if properly conducted. The daily press has
quite as much as it can do in giving current
neAvs; its commercial and trade reports are
necessarily brief and imperfect; and hence
have been called into existence such journals
as the Chronicle, to do justice to financial
interests; '(he Economist, to furnish information
to the dry-goods trade; the Shoe and Leather
Reporter, Tobacco Leaf, Telegrapher, and other
organs, devoted to specialties, which cannot
be adequately represented by the daily press.

The Real Estate and Building interests of
the metropolis are enormous and widely rami¬
fied, and demand vastly more attention than
they have heretofore had from the press. It
is only recently the prices paid in the transfers
of real estate have been published, but the
daily papers do not give the names of the buy¬
ers and sellers, in which most of the interest
centres.

In the Record we propose to supply this
omission; not only so, but, in addition, we
shall also give all the official facts in connec¬
tion with the great mortgaging interest. This
information is, of course, of supreme interest
to all who deal in Real Estate.

We also propose to give very great atten¬
tion to Building Material. So far, the lumber,
stone, brick, marble, cement, ai/d other inter¬
ests connected -with the building trade, have
been almost wholly overlooked. No city
paper gives lumber statistics, or the facts con¬
nected with the stone, iron, and brick trades,
beyond a carelessly-compiled Price Current.
This is good, so far as it goes, but it does not
go half far enough. We intend to make this
department as near perfection as it is possible
to get it. Hence, not only real estate dealers
and o-wners must take this Record ; it will be
indispensable to the architect, builder, mason,
carpenter, lumber merchant, brick and marble
dealer,   cement   and  lime  trader, seller  of





paint and putty; in short, every one who
deals in any thing which enters into the com¬
position of a house.

The Record will also be a medium between
the buyers and sellers of real property. Now
this class of advertisements is divided between
the difterent daily papers, and a purchaser
must look through all of them to get what he
wants. Hereafter, when a man desires a
house, or wishes to sell one, he will naturally
do his business through the Record, By so
doing he will save money, and reach just the
class he wishes to deal with.

Heretofore, architects, lumbermen,, paint-
dealers, brick-sellers, iron-manufacturers, etc.,
have had no means of reaching the public
through any paper of their own; now, how¬
ever, they have an organ, and they must see
to it that it is properly supported.





THE  BUILDING  SEASON.

Everything indicates that the gloomy and
severe reign of Winter is broken at last, and
that a bright and early Spring is already upon
us. Simultaneously with this, the black and
portentous political clouds which have for
months past been hovering over us, paralyzing
trade and checking enterprise, if not entirely
passed away, have to a great extent lost the
terrors which pervaded them. Whatever other
interests may be affected and kept in abeyance
during the important changes wliich the
country is undergoing, it is pretty certain—
from the real nature of things—that building
at least must go on, without any material re¬
duction over the eflbrts of past years, if not
with a positive increase. Nothing is more
clearly written in the book of Eate than that,
to meet the constant increase in our popu¬
lation and resources, we must go on building,
and rapidl}"- too, until we have not only cov¬
ered every square foot of Manhattan Island,
but laid tribute the opposite shores of the
East and Hudson Rivers for our overflowing
numbers. In this view there is no safer or
surer investment than in improved real estate,
and well our capitalists know it.

One thing should, however, be borne in
mind, in order to avoid the errors of many
during past years, and that is, that there is
a season not only for building but for prepar¬
ing to build, which it behooves the building
proprietor to look after as narrowly as does
the agriculturist the proper time for plowing
and sowing. Those who have not already
wisely prepared their plans, so as to be ready
for the commencement of settled and favor¬
able weather, should lose not a day in doing
so. ^i^f tf te^typf n^^ji|fg^^^d-





ing in the spring to allow the long and dreary
winter months—during which their plans''"
should be drawn and matured—to glide away//,
in useless inactivity, and only just a day or
two before they wish to actually set their
masons and bricklayers at work they come
rushing in upon their architects, already over¬
burdened by the engagements of just such
loiterers as themselves. Some people seem
to imagine'tliat architects have some sort of
magic machinery by which they can stamp a
set of plans and specifications at a moment's
notice; or that they can get all the drawings
they need for the grandest building just as
readily as having their hkeness taken by sun-
Hght at the nearest photographer's. They
seem to forget that the plans of even the
cheapest building (and the cheaper the
building the more thought and trouble it fre¬
quently gives the di-isigner, to make ends
meet) are a matter of time, deliberate study
and calculation, involving a^ infinity of ex¬
periments and changes in form before they
come perfected from the architect's hands.

This practice is as short-sighted as it is in¬
convenient, not only to architects and build¬
ers, but to those employing them. By get¬
ting plans prepared at so late an hour, the
architect, instead of devoting—as he could
easily have done during the long unoccupied
Avinter months—all his own time and per¬
sonal skill in maturing the work of his client,
is compelled to hurry it through as best ho
can by aid of assistants. But there is an¬
other and most important feature, and that is,
that delay may prove a pecuniary loss to the
employer. It cannot be doubted that a con¬
tract made during the dull winter months, or
at the early commencement of the season,
before work has been largely distributed
among contractors, would be taken at far mi
advantageous terms to the proprietor than
later period, when contractors have their ha:
full with other engagements. We have in
eye, at this moment, parties Avho Ave kij
are going to build this season, but who
not yet even got their plans prepared; d(
ing fi:om month to month in the vain
that labor and material will fall in pric
that they can thereby effect a better baj
Such parties, we fear, will find thei
disappointed. Neither labor nor materi
likely to fall in price under an increasj
mand for them; and the contractor,
week or two, will be over head
work, is certainly not going to .'
work at any less rate than he yrould
manded a month or two ago, when
was dull and his energies unemploy(





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