AND   BUILDERS'   GUIDE.





Vol. X.





NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1872.





N(}. 247.





Published Weekly bv

TIIE REAL ESTATB RECORD ASSOCIATION.

TERMS.

One year, in advance......................§6 00

All commuhicatioris should be addressed to

■7 AND  9 WAliniSN STllTCHT.





No receipt for money due the Rkal EsT.vrK Rkcoud
will be acknowledged unless signed by one of our regular
collectors. HuNiiy. D. S.mitii or Tho.mas F. Cujimings.
All bills for collection will be sent from the office on a regu¬
larly printed form.





The leading article publislied in the Record
of last week on the Real Estate Market received
no editorial supervision, not having been intend¬
ed for the editorial columns. The -writer, in
speaking of Fort Washington and the Dyckman
property as including the most valuable in
the market, referred to its prospective value,
which, in a measure, depends on certain contin¬
gencies likely to happen.





Real estate brokers, propeily holders, build¬
ers, and others interested, will confer a favor
on the publisher of the Record by notifying
him immediately at the office, by letter or
otherwise, of any error which may have appear¬
ed in the columns of the Record during the past
.year, so that it may be noticed under the head¬
ing of Errata, in the index now being j)rei3ared.





FIRE INSUEANCE.

The enormous enhancement of the rates of
fire insurance is very justly regarded by the
business community with a great deal of indig¬
nation. Because the fire-insurance iaterest
has proved inadequate to meet a great calamity
like the burning of Boston or Chicago, the sur-
•vi-dng companies thereupon put up the rates.
This is undoubtedly an excellent thing for the
companies, but the public have -no greater
security than they had before., It was not that
the rates were too low that the various com¬
panies were unable to meet, their losses, but
that they did too scattered a business for their
capital. The true remedy would be, not to
enhance the price of policies, but to enlarge the
capitals of the respective companies so as to
give greater security to the con-lmunit3^

As we have said iu a previous article,' we
shall never have a perfectly secure insurance
of unproved property until the general govern¬
ment undertakes the business. Itj and it alone,
can give us the most ample security at the
most trifling, cost. The community now pay
nearly $2.50 to fire insurauce companies and
get but one dollar in return. The enormous
rates simply add another dollar to the sum
which the companies put in their pockets, with¬
out any assurance that the public will get any
more than they did-under the old rates.





PINKS OF POLITENESS (T)
Among the " reforms " agitated and instituted
by the heads of the municipal departments, we
would suggest that some little attention be turn¬
ed to the personnel of oifice attaches. When
perchance a -visitor has occasion to transact bus¬
iness with the chief ofiicials, in too many in¬
stances he must brook what is little short of
open insult from some one or more of the youth¬
ful representatives who infest the reception
room. The contrast between the discourtesy of
these intennediates and the courtesy of their
superiors is great. Ask one of them if the com¬
missioner is in, he will turn with a scowl and
a yawn, and coolly ejaculate, "What do you
want ? " Request that your card may be sent
to the inner office, the fledgling will caress the
bantling Dundrearys that have begun to appear
at the side of each ear, stare at you for a mo¬
ment, roll his tobacco from one side of his mouth
to the other, and after readjusting himself to
a more comfortable position, give utterance to,
" Directly." These youths are evidently desir¬
ous of impressing the luckless novice -with their
superiority to the average citizen, and presume
quite too much on the terror of their frqwn and
the cut of their short coats and their legged
pants. In some of the departnients one meets
with universal courtesy. Perhaps none of our
Chiefs of Bureau's are more genuinely polite
than the Commissioner of Public Works and
Deputy Barber, and we would especially caU to
their notice the facts we have stated, which can¬
not but reflect upon themselves. This complaint
of insolence is one of long standing and should
be remedied.





THE NEW COLLEGIATE EEFOElVrED PEOT-
ESTANT DUICH CHUECH.

This very prominent building, just completed
at the corner of Forty-eighth street and Fifth
avenue, was opened on Thanksgiving Day, on
which occasion the double sei-vice was celebrat¬
ed of dedicating and thanksgiving. •' If costli¬
ness, size, pretension, and novelty were the only
elements necessary in producing a first-class
ecclesiastical building, then could this church
boast of being perhaps the most remarkable in
the whole city. But as these do not form the
only elements in successful architecture, we
shall endeavor to show in what this structure
falls far short of architectra-al excellence.

The site is, in the first place, one of those
well selected ones which gave the architeet the
grandest opportunity for the display of taste
and talent. Standing at the north-west angle
of the juii<^tion of; Fifth avenue with Forty-
eighth sti-eclt, covering an area of some 12,000
feet, with a* frontage on the avenue of eighty
feet, and a corresponding depth on Forty-eighth
street, it possesses faciLities for perspective
effects wliich rarely fall to the lot of other





buildings. The building, which has been in
course of erection ever since 1868, is of unusu¬
ally solid construction, erected of brown stone,
and in the matter of carved details, which are
in superabundance, has evidently had the ad¬
vantage of excellent stone-cutters. The church
is most singularly arranged. Besides the main
tower and spire—properly placed at the south- ■
east angle—there are two smaller ones at the
noi-th-east and south-west angles of the build¬
ing. The largest tower, still unfinished, will in
its complete state be two hundred and sixty-
one feet high, the two smaller ones one hundred
feet and one hundred and fourteen feet respec¬
tively. To the main front there are four
entrances, besides a side one on Forty-eighth
street. Each one of these is treated dift'erently,
each apparently striving to be more eccentric
than its neighbor. The large central doorway
is extremely elaborate, formed of deeply-re¬
cessed jambs with clustered columns, and
surmounted by a large rose-window filled with
wooden tracery, producing a poverty-stricken
appearance in contrast with the extravagance
of stone decoration immediately below it.
This unpleasant feature is noticeable through¬
out. The tracery of the windows which should
be of stone, and which in all good Gothic build¬
ings should be one of the leading features for
consideration, is here made to succumb entirely
to the costliness of decoration in other portions.
Along the whole of the south front—cut up un¬
meaningly into a regiment of small gables—the
windows are all filled -with wooden tracery of
most miserable detail in mouldings, while along
the whole north front the architect has been
content with merely cutting out the form of
tracery from many flat pine-boaids, painted
white, and giving the -windows the appearance
of so many tinsel-plate cuttings.

The mind is absolutely puzzled and confused
in looking at this building, and the spectator
tries in vain to understand the object of the
designer in the queer combinations he has made
of his ornaments. Such a heterogeneous jum¬
ble of some of the most beautiful forms of
Gothic architecture was perhaps never before
produced. The architect seems to have taken
his " Glossary of Gothic Architecture," selected
from it all such conceits as seemed most cun¬
ning and ingenious, and then scattered them
pell-meU over his fronts, without any regard
whatever to their applicabilitj^ or constructive
meaning. ; The north-eastern turret would
drive even a Pugin crazy, in trying to compre¬
hend its many twists and turns and strange
de-yices.                                    ,        .

The flying-buttress is a graceful feature in Go¬
thic architecture, but it has its distinct use and
meaning-r-as one can see to perfection in such
buildings as Notre Dame of Paris—in throwing
weight from one point to another.    Buttresses