Real Estate Record





AND     BUILDERS'    GUIDE.





Vol. XVII.





NEW TOEK, SATUEDAY, APEIL 1, 1876.





No. 420.





Published Weekly by

THE REAL ESTATE RECORD ASSOCIATION.

C. W, SWEET...........,'..,Pkesident and Tbeasubeb

PRESTON I. SWEET...........Secketabv.

L. ISRAELS................,,........Business Manages

TERMS.
ONE YEAR, ill ad vance.... $10 00.





Communications should be addressed to

C    SV.   ©T\^.1EET,

Nos. 345 AND Z4S Bboadway





A. T. STEWART AS A EEAL ESTATE
OPEEATOE.





Mr. A. T. Stewart natm-ally escapes criticism
from the New York press. He is a liberal ad¬
vertiser, and this serves to exempt him from
much of the Commemt which his course would
provoke were his patronage less remunerative.
His great success in life seems to have been
based upon three special faculties-his sound
judgment of goods, his astuteness in choosing
assistants, and his remarkable organizing faculty.

The two novelties which he introduced into
the retail trade of New York, and which should
make him be regarded as a public benefactor,
were the one-price system and the stoppage of all
retail credit. In every other large capital of the
civilized world the traveler is at the mercy of
the storekeeper. In Paris or London, in Berlin
orYienna, the American or Enghshman,'com¬
pared with the native customer, labors under a
disadvantage; and though goods can be pur¬
chased cheaper there than here, yet in New York
alone is it possible for tbe stranger to fare just
as well as the native. For this reform New
York is mainly indebted to Mr. A. T. Stewart.
It has given an immense business to this city,
because all the minor stores have been com¬
pelled to adopt this admirable and honest sys¬
tem, first begun by Mr. A. T. Stewart. "We
believe the firm of Lord & Taylor claim to
have preceded him in the adoption of the cash
and one-price system; but it was in a little store
in Catharine street, and it did probably for the
poorer classes of custoniers what Mr. Stewart
effected for the middle and upper classeis.

It is not, however, of Mr. Stewart, the dry-
goods merchant, that we wish to speak, but of
the same gentleman as a real estate investor,
and in this business he certainly does not dis¬
play qualiti.es which make him rank high in the
estimation of dealers in realty. Let anyone
run over the list of his knovm properties, and it
will be seen how unwise he has been, and how
he has lacked sagacity in a most remarkable de¬
gree. It is clear that his first store, on the cor¬
ner of Chambers stfeet and Broadway, was too
far down town for any such costly building as
he erected. Neither did he foresee, when he
oonstructed the great building on Tenth street,





that within a very few years the centre of trade
would btf farther up town. His determined op¬
position to a railroad on Broadway (for to him
belongs the credit or discredit of defeating the
myriad of attempts to lay one upon that avenue)
shows the singular unwisdom which seems to
possess aU real-estate owners touching the value
of street-car companies. Nothing is better set¬
tled now than that the driving away of horse-
cars from a street drives business away wiih
them. Thtis the efforts made by Mr. Stewart
to protect Broadway from Union square down
has resulted in depriving that thoroughfare of
one-haK of its legitimate retail trade.

The property-owners on Third avenue are
faithfully copying this mistake of Mr. Stewart's,
and with the fact before their eyes of a hitherto
neglected district, the Ninth avenue and Green¬
wich street, becoming better business streets
than they were before on account of the rail¬
roads forced upon these localities, the Third
avenue people are doing what they can to make
Second avenue a rival. Then look at Mr. Stew¬
art's j)reposterous building on Thirty-second
street and Fourth avenue. Originally intended
for a woman's lodging-house, when completed
it seemed so absurd for such a purpose that even
he had to abandon it after having invested im¬
mense sums of money in a structure that is ab¬
solutely good for nothing. Unfit for a hotel from
its location, useless as a lodging-house, out of
the way of trade, there it will long stand, a
monument of the consummate unwisdom of a
man who, in his own department of business,
has proved himself exceptionally able. His
ownership of the Metropolitan Hotel is another
instance of his lack of foresight in picking out a
locality where hotel business had just become
unprofitable. The Lelands ran the Metropoli¬
tan as long as there was any money in that loca¬
tion. But it is now clear that the hotels of the
future are to be nearer the Central Park, or else
located further down-town, to accommodate the
business traveler and commercial man generaUy.
When Niblo's Garden was burnt down, Mr.
Stewart failed to see that the location had be¬
come undesirable for a theatre, and rebuilt that
edifice, to have it lie as a burden on his hands
ever since. Again, the Catholic Church in Ninth
street, and the church on Broadway, since con¬
verted into a theatre, are both signal instances
of unwise investments. His purchase of Hemp-
stead.Plain, simply because it was the cheapest
large property near New York, is certainly
against the judgment of real-estate operators.
He is there attempting a daring experiment—
nothing less than the creation of a community
which shall have churches, schools, water, gas,
aU the appliances of municipal life, without a
single person having any interest in a foot of
ground on the whole domain. He proposes to
be landlord, mayor and alderman—in fact, the
whole municipality—allowing the inhabitants





only to pay him rent and purchase goods from his
stores. This may succeed, but it would be a
marvel should it do so.

We speak thus freely of a private individual
because it is a public misforttme when money
earned from a community is unwisely invested.
All wealth is the creation of human labor, and,
if not used productively, is so much lost to the
world. If Mr. Stewart lavished his wealth like
Jim risk, who ran theatres, kept a stud, patron¬
ized the races, and was guilty of costly follies,
he could not have been more of a nuisance to
the community. * Mr. Stewart undoubtedly has
public spirit. He means to do well by the com¬
munity in which he lives; but his opposition to
rapid transit, his unwise investments in real
estate, his preposterous building on Thirty-
second street, make of him, in a modified sense
cf the word, a real public enemy. Even the
house he lives in is conspicuous for its bad
taste. It is unfortunate that he should have
employed and brought into notice an architect
whose splendid opportunities have given us the
very poorest specimens of large buildings in
New York. Mr. Kellum, now dead, had some
magnificent chances, but what a poor affair is
the store on the corner of Tenth street and
Broadway. To the same architect the city is
indebted for the Herald building, a most unfor¬
tunate edifice in every respect. To see what a
real architect could do with far less means and
opportunity, look at the Park Bank and compare
it with the Herald building. No one believes
that Mr. Stewart could get one quarter of the
money he paid for the real estate now held in
his name.

Since writing Ihe above the World newspaper
of this city announces that, after all, the Fourth
avenue edifice is to be used as a lodging-house
for poor women. A preposterous use for a most
absurd building!





APARTMENT HOUSES.





In speculating about the future of New York
real estate, it would be well to bear in mind the
probable effect of the "tenement houses of the
rich," better known as apartment houses or
Paris flats. The multiplication of these im
mense establishments for housing well-to-do
people has been a marked feature of our bidld-
ihg business dining the past five years. It has
been found that by economizing the amount of
ground required, and building palaces contain¬
ing suites of rooms after the Parisian plan, that
large profits can be realized at present prices of
tenements in New York. In the case of the first
important house of this kind built in New York
(the Haight House, corner of Fifth avenue and
Fifteenth street), it is understood that as much
as 30 per cent, profit was made during the first
three or four years of the existence of that estab¬
lishment.   The Albany, |the Saratoga, theKnick]