AND    BUILDERS'    GUIDE





YoL. XII.





NEW YORK, SATUEDAY, JULY 5, 1873.





No. 277





Published Weekly by

m   REAL  ESTATE  RECORD ASSOCIATION.

TERMS.

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

All communications should be addressed to

Whiting Building, 345 and 317 Bro-j^-dway.





A FAVOEED LOCALITY.





The heading of our article shows clearly
enough that it is not of the oily as a Avhole
we intend to speak, though that is favored
enough by nature, hardly by art—we mean
to refer particularly to that portion bounded
by Filth and Madison avenues, and lying above
Forty-second street; and we long since referred
to the lasting works in hospitals and asylums
which decorate this part of the city, and do
honor to their designers and builders. There
is one remarkable fact about the locality of
■which we speak: it is the overplus of churches.
We are a singularly pious people. Between
Fifth and Madison avenues from Forty-second
to Fifty-sixth streets can be counted a baker's
dozen (padre's dozen, the Portuguese aptly
puts it,) of conventicles, with at least as many
more in sight on the side streets. If archi¬
tecture is frozen music, as Goethe said, then
this score of chilly sharps and fiats can hardly
be matched anywhere for congealed discord.
They vary " from grave to gay, from lively to
severe," and ring the changes from the im¬
mense Cathedral to Mr. Hepworth's "Church of
the Disciples," the very latest idea in church¬
ing. There was once an architect named
Vanbrugh, who wrote plays. His comedies
were indecently light, his architecture deco¬
rously heavy, and of one of his pet " bizarre-
ries," Pope wrote :

"At length we in the dust descry
A thing resembling a mud pie."

On Sunday last, while, standing opposite the
late-mentioned . corrugated edifice, our Avits,
^eedless of time, place, and circumstance, as
his own woful " Blenheim House," fiew off to
poor Vanbrugh and his " mud pie." Yet we
hardly do it justice, for outlined against the

*■ Commodore's depot (which looks like an hos¬
pital,) this ungainly erection has all the air
of a circus. Unconsciously we listened, for
it seemed as if we must hear the  thud of

. horses' feet and the shrill cackle of the clown
from the central pavilion, while on either
hand rose the turrets of small side-shows v/hich,
but for the absence of drum and yard-long
poster, predicated a three-legged pig and the
bearded woman. The thing is so corrugated
as to be wrinkled. A column, seen through
the entrance, has its cinctm-e slipped on over
the fl.utes; and the ornamental moldings (a
neat collection of which, in seven different





styles, we noticed, while gliding by,) look like
the stamped figures on the ridged gingerbread
of our childhood, for this unhappy edifice is
condemned to sa,ve sinners in a suit the very
hue of Master Blender's " little cain-colored
beard." The interior plan is admirable; not a
pillar interrupts the view, and the pulpit,
backed by the organ, occupies the centre of a
rising, semi-circular amphitheatre. No galler¬
ies, no transepts. Imagine a large fashionable
fan spread out wide; the sticks are the con¬
gregation, and the ])rass-headed knob on the
handle is the minister. There is not in the
city a room so calculated for uninterrupted
sight and heariitg by an audience; but here
all praise must stop. The flat, corrugated
ceiling, painted blue and plastered occasionally
with unmeaning white bars of molding, the
fiat cornice, the shallow cove—which is no
cove—the tasteless pillars, the hideous poly-
chromed organ, the impertinent column on
either side it, all are simpl}'- unbearable. The
whole thing is cheaply immense. We recalled
the scene in the second part of " Faust," where
Mephisto—fit personage for the office—ex¬
plains to the court Fool the value of the treas¬
ury notes he has just caught flying, and our
imagination hit upon a somewhat free render¬
ing in a dialogue between the Architect of the
corrugiited era, personified as Mephisto, and
the retrogressive Parson, personified as the
Fool:

Fool. See here, will this small paper really
buy?

Meph. You  have the wherewithal, there,
only try.

Fool. What, all these snuff'ers, flutes, and
roof, and things ?

Meph. Of   course!   just   tiy it!   all these
money brings.

Fool. With pulpit, organ, this unheard-of
moulding?

Meph. Yes! run, or else! cure your fears
with scolding!

Fool. To-morrow I'll begin the excavation.
{Exit)

Meph. (To tlie Public.) Who doubts a Patent
Parson's calculation ?





another in this matter of New York's relations
to its suburbs.   Whatever improvements are
projected for these suburbs, whether it be in
•Jersey City or Brooklyn or Westchester, must
receive the cordial support of the residents of
New York City;  and no petty jealousies on
the one side, nor the cry of burdensome tax¬
ation for these improvements on the other side,
will at all be permitted to interrupt the steady
gfowtlt of that suburb, and the improvements
incident thereto.    The policy of annexation
has been set in motion, and whoever doubts
that the ball will not be kept rolling, misinter¬
prets the enterprising spirit of our population.
Speculators may here and there take advan¬
tage of that spirit, and endeavor to go faster
than ordinary prudence dictates in such mat¬
ters.   But after all, they are the mere off-shoots
of a movement   that   has an unmistakable
sound basis to stand upon.   And that move¬
ment consists in this, that the City of New
York must expand not only to Westchestei-
not only to Brooklyn, but all around, anci
especially to Jersey City and its adjacent towns
and   villages.    . Whatever    improvement   is
therefore being projected for the towns and '
villages on the other side of the Hudson is so
much gained for the future, and must be re,
garded as a beginning of still greater improve¬
ments that will come hereafter.   New York
certainly cannot permit Jersey City, with its
magnificent water front, to grow up as a for¬
midable rival, as surely it will if our capital¬
ists are deterred by the cry of "burdensome
taxation" from investing their money there.
The Jersey shore of the Hudson fronting New
York City will be ouis in due course of time
and the sooner the small property holders in
Jersey City and Newark, as well as their short¬
sighted organs here, see this fact the better it
will be for their own peace of mind as well as
their own future interests.    The march of
improvement must go on, and whoever doubts
this mistakes the mission of the great Ameri¬
can metropolis.





JERSEY CITY AND ITS FUTUEE.





From NeAV Jersey there arises a cry of bur¬
densome taxation on the part of small prop¬
erty owners, who cannot possibly understand
the broad views that must necessarily control
the movements of those who have the future
and welfare of their localities at heart; and
here in New York, we regret to say, there are
influential journals short-sighted enough to
re-echo these cries and to endorse the narrow-
minded views of a few Jersey property hold¬
ers.   It is time that we should understand one





CITY PEOJECTS VETOED BY THE GOVEElfOR.

A large number of bills relating to improve¬
ments of streets, and in relation to city prop¬
erty, have been vetoed by the Governor. We
give the most important of these:





To provide an assessment for regulating, gi-ading and
sewering parts of Tenth avenue and Ninety-third street
in the City of New York.                                               '

It is represented that under this bill unjust demands
of-large amounts may be made against the City Treas¬
ury, and that a particular contract, executed in violation
of law, may be rendered legal and of binding force

To alter the map or plan of the City of Ne'vv York be¬
tween Fulton and Chambers streets, from the City Hall
Park to South street.

The charter reorganizing the local government of the
City of Ne-sv York, section 105, gives the Mayor Comp¬
troller, Commiseioner of Public Works, the President
of the Department of Public Parks, and the President
of the Board of Aldermen, ample power to lay out
open, widen, straighten, extend, alter, and close streets
or avenues.   There is no necessity for the appointment