AND   BUILDERS'   GUIDE





Vol. X.





NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.





No. 237.





Publislied Weekly bv

THE REAL ESTATE RECORD ASSOCIATION.

TERMS.

One year. In advance......................56 00

All eommuuications should be addressed to

C.   "W.   S^WEET.

7 AND 9 WARREN STBKET.





No receipt for money due the Rral Estatr Rkcord
will be acknowledged unless signed by one of our regular
collectors. Henry D. Smith or Thomas F. Cummings.
All bills for collection will be sent from the office on a regu¬
larly printed ferm.





Special Notice.

Wakted.—Twenty cents each \vill be paid for Nos. 199
and 207 of the Recobd. .





NEW POST-OEFICE.

Since we were destined, apparently, to have
tlie new Post OfiRce located where it is—a choice
of location which to this day appears to a large
majority a very serious blunder—^it is at least
a matter of congratulation that the unwelcome
intruder promises to be a building worthy of
this great metropolis.    Whether judged by its
internal arrangement, its solidity of construc¬
tion, or its effect externally, no public building
hitherto erected in New York was ever more
adapted to the purposes intended, or proved a
greater ornament to the city than this will be
when completed.    Few who daily watch those
enormous derricks lifting huge masses of granite
weighing many tons, and placing them in their
■ bed as easily and mechanically as an elephant
would napye a tAvig with his trunk, probably
appreciate the vast size of this structure, and
consequently the very great celerity -with which
it has been reared so far, and is still advancing.
Unlike other edifices, which have ordinarily to
deal with only one or tAvo fronts, the new Post
Office has four,  embracing—with the breaks
and recesses—a total of some 1,400 running
feet of frontage; which is equivalent in length
to 56 houses, of 25 feet frontage, placed side by
side along a street.    The length of frontage on
Broadway and Park Kpw is 290 feet, on the
north side facing the City HaU. 300 feet, and on
the south side 130 feet.    The cellar is 12 feet
deep, in the clear, the basement 17 feet, the
ground story 30 feet, the second story 23 feet,
the third story 36 feet, the attic 18 feet, and
the dome 32 feet;   thus forming,  from the
ground linfe to the top of dome, a total height
of over 125 feet;    The excavation alone was
somethiag enormous—100,000 cubic yards of
solid earth having ha(i to be removed before the
building could be commenced.    Up to the pre¬
sent time it has consumed 450,000 cubic feet
of granite, 4,500,000 lbs. of iron, and 6,500,000
bricks for the inner walls.    Timber, as a ma¬
terial, has been utterly ignored throughout,





except for the temporary purposes of scaffold¬
ing, etc.

Ground was broken for the new Post Office
in 1869, but OAving to the great amount of ex¬
cavation to be accomplished,  for a building
covering not less than an acre and an eighth of
space, but still more owing to the difficulties of
obtaining timely appropriations from Congress,
the work seemed to hang heavUy in its first
stages; as indeed all buildings do when engaged
Avith their underAvorks; Avhere there is so much
to be done, and yet, to the unpractised looker-
on, so little to show for it.    It was not till the
spring of 1871 that it fairly commenced opera¬
tions above ground, and, the money supplies
ha\ing since then been more regularly forth¬
coming, there can be no question that the works
have been pushed vdth extraordinary celerity—
especially during the present summer.    So far
advanced already are the inner walls, the prog¬
ress of Avhich, and the labor involved are but
little appreciated by those who judge only from
the exterior, that the Superintendent confident¬
ly expects to start the roof on Broadway by the
end of October.   An attempt was recently made
in a daily contemporary to institute a comparison
between the progress of the New Yorh Zeitung^s
new building and that of the new Post Office.
But such a comparison is altogether unfair ; the
circumstances of the two buildings being so
utterly dissimilar as to admit of no comparison
whatever.   As well attempt a race between the
constiruction of a little pleasure yachtand an
iron-clad man-of-war.    The Zeitung building,
a very creditable construction and very solidly
built, is, nevertheless, quite insignificant along¬
side of the structure with which it was sought
to compare it.    It cannot have more than 300
feet of frontage, Avhereas, as we said before,
th.e Post Office measures 1,400 feet.     Indeed it
would be no exaggeration to state that, by ac¬
tual measurement, the Zeitung building could,
when completedj be conveniently put into the
south-west projection of the new Post Office.
Where the comparison can justly be made, and
should be made, is between the latter building
and that monstrous monument of degraded
taste and official corruption—the Court House.
And what a contrast!    Here is a brulding of
certainly not one-third the size of the  new
Post Office, cut out of soft marble and not hard
granite, which took long years to reach even its
present unfinished condition, and -which has
probably already squandered some 11,000,000 of
dollars, while the Post Offi.ce, of three times its
size, buUt far more solidly, and erected com¬
plete  in one-third -the time, -wiU not, at the
utmost, exceed $4,000,000 in cost.    If it should
ultimately prove not to exceed that figure, it
may be justly pronounced one of the cheapest
buildings, public or private, ever erected in. this
:city. ;   .     -■•■:■





We have hitherto spoken only cf the solid
and material features of this building, but,
taken in an artistic point of view, it AviU equally
bear criticism. With the single exceptions of
the Equitable Insurance building, and the new
Masonic Temple, there is no civil building yet
erected in this city, of a classical order, which
can at all compare with it in solid and sub¬
stantial dignity, while its enormous size will
enable it to overshadow both the last-mentioned
structures. It is of the Rpman Doric order,
with well-proportioned columns, pilasters and
entablatures, enclosing arched windows of ex¬
tremely graceful dimensions, Avith deep and
effective jambs and recesses which give an
appearance at once of great strength and beauty.
The idea of rusticating the columns and pilas-.
ters of the first story ivill not be thoroughly
appreciated until the building is complete;
then it will be seen that having done so adds
great massiveness and apparent strength to the
lower story, which supports the great impend¬
ing mass of masonry. One very pleasing fea¬
ture is the skilfnlness with which the vario-os
elevations have been adapted to the peculiar
triangular form of the site; the building, -vdew-
ed from each of the four comers, giving at
every turn a fresh and varied aspect. Ti\Tien
completed, the Post Office aviU completely
dwarf all other objects in its immediate neigh¬
borhood. The Astor House and HeraM office
wUl look as if they could be stowed away in
some comer of its basement, and even the ven¬
erable City Hall Avill shrink into the dimensions
of some old-fashioned toy. It may be, perhaps,
to avoid this that some of our sapient city
fathers have recently been agitating the ques¬
tion of croAvning the latter with a new story
and a huge Mansart roof, as if such petty means
could forestall the inevitable. They had much
better leave such a notion alone* Instead of
thereby adding anything to the dignity or beauty
of the City HaU, they would only be converting
that old structure, Avith which nobpdy at pres¬
ent finds fault, and for which every one feels
a sort of local veneration, into a pitiful object
of architectural pretension and absurdity.





MECHA]SriCS' LIENS.





NEW YORK.





Sept.

20 Broadway, w. s. (Nos. 71(fe73), cok.

Rector st.    Kenyon & Newton agt.

Edward Matthews................     $925 00

20 Same propekty.   Kenyon, Newton

(feScoviUe.agt. same..............    1,000 00,

25 Eighty-fifth st., n. s., bet. 2d &1

Sdavs..........................I

Eighty-sixth st., s. s., bet. 2d & f

3d avs..........................)

Michael Horan agfc. Edw'd S. Innea        50 00