Real  Estate   Record





AND BUILDERS' GUIDE.





Yol. XX.





NEW YOEK, SATUEDAY, OCTOBEE 20, 1877.





No.  501.





Published Weekly by

C^^ %mi Estate %itoxti %^^atmimix.

TERMS.
ONE YEAR, in advance....$10.00.

Communicafcions should be addressed to

C.  W.  SWEET,

Nos. 345 AND 347 Broadway.





TRADE AS AN ELEMENT OP VALUE.

The destiny of this city is being steadily and
unmistakably developed,  under a process more
plain and palpable than any sought to be estab¬
lished by scientific deductions.   That destiny no
longer hinges upon questions of rivalry and com¬
parative   superiority  with  puny and  aspiring-
neighbors, or upon questions of internal govern¬
mental administration or upon fine-spun theories
of the ways and means of collecting municipal
revenues.    AU these present fruitful topics of
discussion and afford lessons of wisdom for futm'e
guidance.   The obstacles which their considera¬
tion is apt to procreate must be deemed subordin¬
ate and  unimportant, to the extent, at least, to
which New York has been able to assert her chief
supremacy, in spite and defiance of them.   With
more than sixty per cent, of the entire foreign
and domestic commerce of the country transacted
at her gates, and the records showing an increas¬
ing ratio, New York may look complacently on
the gloomy forebodings of distracted social phi¬
losophers and captious political economists.   The
successive frameworks of government, sought to
be applied to tliis city, have been notable experi¬
ments and acknowledged failures, while our citi¬
zens are to-day living,«as they have ever hved, in
the yearly anticipation of being blessed with a
wise, efficient, comprehensive scheme of govern¬
ment.   The past career of New York has been
spent under the unjust exactions of a system of
taxation that the best authority declares to be
impracticable and  discreditable.     Still, though
her citizens, in common with the rest of mankind,
have been plunged in the depths of a momentous
commercial revulsion, during the past four years,
the signs abound that the Empire city is begin¬
ning to emerge therefrom, with unabated vigor of
growth   and with  undimmed   and unimpaired
splendor of prestige.   The force of her destiny
derives its momentum from the ability, energy
and indomitable pluck of her citizens, picked and
representative men, culled from the four quarters
of the land and from every civilized country in
the world, attracted and blended together in a
common mass or mosaic by the ii*resistible, nat¬
ural magnetism of the great metropolis.   It is the
glory of this city, not its reproach, that it is a
community of traders.     Foreigners a,re apt to
complain of the intense absorption of our promi¬
nent citizens in trade pm-suits; of the shallowness
and pretentiousness of our best society; of the
meagreness, next to destitution, of the aesthetic
spirit and of art products; of the total absence of
a refined, cultivated and leisurely—that is, idle-
male element in the community. We may render
ourselves amenable to some such criticism, but
the explanation is found in the fact that the spirit





of industrious occupation is the prevailing Amer¬
ican trait, the idle man, of high or low degree,
being despised and practically an outcast, and
this spirit finds its natural and congenial expres¬
sion in trade enterprises.    The combined giant
energies of our citizens are being consecrated and
devoted to laying- broad and deep the foundation
lines of a vast emporium of trade, a fulcrum from
whicn may be swayed the commerce of the globe.
The skill and readiness of our citizens to cope
with every physical or mechanical obstacle that
may arise cannot be brought into question.   The
methods and the seasons for dealing with them
alone are subjects of criticism and controversy.
The main problems that affect our destiny and
progress are practically reduced to these two—
the proper distribution of a rapidly increasing
population  and the reasonable control of real
estate values.   WhUe these two converge at and
are embraced in the one plain proposition that
there is an actual paucity or a bare sufiiciency ot
acceptable business and residence space and ac¬
commodation.   There was a time when it could
be said that the lack of rapid transit contributed
to this result, but, at the present day, it is deter¬
minable that if rapid transit had been earlier
realized it would have brought about before now
the entii-e absorption of existing vacant property,
and we should now be wrestling with the pro¬
blem of the distribution of additional population,
under greatex* difficulties and disadvantages than
now beset us.   Doubtless, within five or ten years
after the complete establishment of rapid transifc,
the condition wiU be upon us, of a practically
complete improvement  and occupation of   the
island.    The long delay of  rapid  transit  has
been a blessing and a benefit in this respect; it
has led to the forcible opening of outlets of popu¬
lation for biisiness, manufacturing and residence
purposes, and, to that extent, has simplified the
problems of the future.   We need not trouble
ourselves about any plans for recalling what is
preposterously termed our lost population, really
the natural  overflow  of  our crowded masses,
who have found congenial *and economical homes
in Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey,
and who, in making their selections, have con¬
sulted their natural affinities and tastes.   No fa-
cililaes of rapid transit wUl serve to bring back
the larger proportion of this multitude until, at
least, their means or family exigencies favor and
compel a change.   These outlying branches of the
great metropolitan family are simply lengthen-
uag the cords and strengthening the stakes of our
municipal boundaries, or rather defimng them, as
they are to be in the future.

The gi'owth of New York has been like that of
a man with a heavy weight imposed on his head.
Though always a commercial city, the warehouse
has been constantly shunned, dreaded, and barely
tolerated in residence neighborhoods. Naturally,
early residences were built upon the mosfc sightly
portion of the island around the Battery, and the
history of our progress from that point might be
delineated by a cartoon representing commerce
as an excited and energetic bull, making a path
for itself by tossing residences further a,nd further
up-town. This compulsory and forcible self as¬
sertion of commerce in seeking to establish itself





in suitable localities must sometime come to au
end ; but doubtless, not until it has cleared suffi¬
cient eligible space for its pm*poses. The ultimate
fixed localities of wholesale and retail trade and
of subdivisions of each of these branches, are not
precisely determinable, but must before long
begin to outline themselves. Residences must
yield before the march of trade. Apart from
natm-al antagonisms the munificent prices which
trade can afford to pay for chosen localities are
generally irresistible to the most stubborn house- .
holder. • As business requirements force resi¬
dences further np-town, it is more than fortunate
that vacant land can there be found at this late
date on which to erect new homes for our citizens.
If these vacancies had been previously filled up
with plain dwellings, the creation of elegant
neighborhoods in new districts would be impossi¬
ble, and the acquisition of isolated lots would be
unsuitable and insufficient. The modem city
residence, models of which are every year being
produced by the hundreds, would have been un¬
known, and the well-to-do New Yorker would be
compelled to content himself with the suburban
chateau or villa as a place of residence.

The dangers and perplexities that threaten us
arise within, not without our borders—from the
very excess of those elements that determine true
and lasting priority and supremacy. A volume of
commerce and industrial effort that chokes and
gorges existing capacities a&d channels, and an
ever swelling tide of population clamorous for
business and residence accommodation. The nar¬
row and limited view of the situation is that which
seeks to confine this gigantic activity to Man¬
hattan Island, and decrifes and discourages its ex¬
pansion beyond our corporate limits, seeking to
hold this immense aggregate of human concerns as
appropriate victims for the tax-gatherer and the
land speculator. High or low taxation cannot
make or mar the destiny of this metropolis. It
has been demonstrated that high taxation, like
high land values, may modify and disturb its
form, but the pillars of the edifice rest on totally
different and more stable foundations. The
diversion of manufacturing and industrial inter¬
ests to adjacent and contiguous points such as the
towns and villages of Long Island, Staten Island,
New Jersey, and Coimecticut, have strengthened
not weakened the commercial prestige and superi¬
ority of New York, and the establishing of com¬
fortable and convenient homes in the near and re¬
mote suburbs of New York has relieved the
island itself from a class of improvements which
it could not accommodate, and reserved a large
portion of its surface for an ultimate and endur¬
ing building improvement that wiU be more in
keeping with the final grandeur of the heart of a
great metropolitan district.

The relative scarcity of available vacant
property on New York Island, made actual by
the lack of rapid transit, has developed a new
—or, rather, intensified an old danger that
seriously threatens the progress and destiny of
our city. The New York lot speculator is the
natural outgrowth of this condition of things—a
type of the speculative genus altogether excep¬
tional and peculiar. He stands alone by himself,
unparalleled and   incomparable in any  other