MilPi





Real  Estate







ECORD





AND BUILDERS' GUIDE.





Vol. XXX.





NEW YOKE, SATUEDAY, AUGUST 19, 1882.





Nr. 753





Published Weekly by The

Real Estate Record Association

TEEMS:
ONE ¥EiR, in adyance  •   >   .   •   <  $6.00

Communications should he addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway.

J. T. LINDSEY. Business Manager.





BUILDING MATERIAL.
The markets for pretty rauch all descrip¬
tions of building material are showing quite
a full degree of animation, indeed, m»>re so
than usual at this season. How great a pro¬
portion of the supplies handled will go into
immediate consumption it is difficult to de¬
termine, but buyers are certainly operating
less closely to actual wants than heretofore,
and will take a little stock against the pos*^!-
bilities of tha near future when quality is
desirable. Thi ? tendency seems to be not so
much upon an expectation of a further im¬
portant advance on values as upon a belief
that prices have reached nearly or quite
hard pari, and production in most cases
passed the maximum, with manufacturers
frequently threatening a sharp reduction for
want of remunerative returns. An attempt
to force any of the accruing advantages just
now would be ruinous, however, and we
think sellers as a rule see this, their policy
rather favoring the retaining of a firm
grip upon prices and a steady distribution
of goods affording a fair margin, until the
season has further progressed to a point
where buyers will have fewer opportunities
to resist. Asa rule, supplies accumulated in
first hands are not abundant so far as stand¬
ard goods are concerned, but some manu¬
facturers and a few importers have ordinal y
stock in hand over which they feel dubious,
and with reason. It has been a bad year to
mako consumers believe that the lowest cost
article was the cheapest, until they had sub¬
jected the offering to a trial, and too often
the offering has '* been found wanting."





TAXATION IN BROOKLYN.
George A. Kingsland. a property-awner in the
Seventeenth Ward of Brooklyn, and S. B.
Duryea, the owner of a store at Fulton and
Pierrepont streets, Brooklyn, have brought suits
against the Board of Assessors to have the action
of the board in valuing their property for pur¬
poses of taxation reviewed in the Supreme
Court under, a writ of certiorari. E. and J.
Rourke, the owners of No. 24 Strong plac«, have
also begun proceedings to have this property
exempt from taxation on the ground that it is
used for the purposes of the Board of Education.
This claim is regarded by the Corporation Coun¬
sel as preposterous.





Commonalty and Hubert O. Thompson, Com-
missioner,of Public Works, from interfering with
the laying of tracks by the Ninth Avenue RaU¬
road Company for the extension of its road
along the Boulevard, from Sixty-fourth street to
Harlem river. The motion to continue the in¬
junction is to be heard on Monday.





NINTH AVENUE RAILROAD EXTENSION.
A temporary injunction was granted by Judge
Donohue in Supreme Court, Chambers, on  Wed¬
nesday, restraining the Mayor, Aldermen and





PAINTING IRON SURFACES.

This subject is becoming of more importance
as iron becomes .more and more prevalent as a
building material. The following: extracts from
a paper read by Mr. Wm. Meeking, before the
Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society, Lon¬
don, furnishes some technical points of interest
in relation to this subject.   It says:

Of the varieties of lacquers and paints
used it is needless to speak at length, as
the all-important point is the actual state
of the iron surface when the first coat
is laid on. If that is not in proper condition, nc
subsequent application, however good in itself,
has any chance of being permanently preserva¬
tive, and I think that that proper state is found
when there has been formed upon the whole sur¬
face of the work a thin layer of the flr^t or black
oxide, which has been, while hot, thoroughly
permeated by and incorporated with a resinous
or tarry covering. Once formed, everything
goes well. Additional coats of paints may be
applied from time to time to renew the thick¬
ness of the original coveiing, but the iron
underneath remains uuattacked. If, on the
contrary, a film of hydrate oxide (ordinary rust
from exposure) be once allowed to form, the suc¬
cessive coats of paint are thrown off sooner or
later, and, in the meantime, the rust has spread
under the paint. A striking instance of this may
be generally seen after outdoor riveted work has
been in place for some time. As a rule, all the
riveting is done before the final painting is com¬
menced, and each rivet-head has in the meantime
been exposed to a damp atmosphere; the paint
invariably commences to peel off the rivet-heads
long before it leaves the adjacent plates, aud
when this has once taken place nothing but a
thorough scraping off of the surface will give the
paint any chance of adhering. So slight are the
differences of manipulation which determine
whether a given piece of work shall cu* shall not
rust away, that I think they may all be found
in the different methods of manufacture pui*-
sued now and formerly. Ta&ing the case of
a piece of ornamental ironwork, which in so
many instances has come down to ui in un¬
impaired beauty and condition, it would be now
probably forged in detail in one part of a fac¬
tory, drilled, filed and fitted in another, and
when completely finished, be painted " in three
coats of beat oil pa'nt." Formerly the smith who
forged the work punched the necessary holes at
the same time, fitted his various pieces together
ns he went on, completing each piece as he pro¬
ceeded, doing all the work with his hammer,
and, to quote an old book of direction to good
smiths, " brushing his work over with linseed
oil, and suspending it for some time over a
strongly smoking wood fire." This will give at
once a sort of elastic enamel coat, perfectly • ad¬
herent, calculated to preserve the iron to the ut¬
most.

To come to practical uses, it appears to me,
first, that in all cases where iron is used exter¬
nally there should ba the most careful provision
made for draining off water, and preventing
any I'dgment in inaccessible places; second,
that the iron used should be in the largest'and
most compact masses possible, with a due regard
to the necessities of construction, avoiding by all
means such designs as are calculated to provide
the largest possible surface for a given weight Of
metal; third, to t ike care that, before the meta-i-
leaves the iron works, and while heated, it>re-^
ceives a coat of some protective sub-tanceKSUch
as tar or linseed oil, which shall - be allQwed?Jts.>;
incorporate itse f with its external sur|aQe„a,nd'
form a durable substratum for future covenugsr
—Exchange.





GOVERNMENT ARCHITECTURE.
The extraordinary number and magnitude of
the appropriations for public buildings made by
the present Congress incidentally illustrate the
large Roman disregard of the claims of art which
characterizes our statesmen. The designs of these
buildings are ail to proceed from the office of the
Supervising Architect of the Treasury. We be¬
lieve that that office has no statutory existence.
Ac all events, the qualifications of the incumbent
are nowhere dt^fiued, and his ai 'pointment or re¬
tention in office is entirely within the discretion
of the Secretary of the Treasury, who is presum¬
ably not a judge of his qualifications. The archi¬
tecture of government building.^, except those in
Washington, is entirely within the control of this
functionary, whose professional competency
no steps have been taken to ascertain. It
is not surprising, thei'efore, that the su¬
pervising architects should not have beeu, as a
rule, men ot high professional standing, or that
the. architecture of recent government buildings
should not represent the best that can be dune by
American architects. It seems high time that
something should be done to secure such a repre¬
sentation, when Congress is granting ten or fif¬
teen millions in a single session for public build¬
ings in all parts of the country, which must ex¬
ercise an influeuce ""'n the private building of the
whole country. No European architect in modem
times has had such an opportunity for the devel¬
opment of architecture as has been afforded by
the lavish appropriations of the past i en years.
And this great power has been given to an officer
whose legal position is simply thMt of a clerk in
the Trensury Department, removable at will.

Mr. William A. Potter, an educated archiJec!',
who held this position for some years, whi se pro¬
fessional standing is higher than that of any
otuer recent incumVient, and some of whose offi¬
cial works are grateful exceptions lo the routine
of government designing, remonstrated against
the system which has come to prevail, and under
which the old requirement that an architectural
design for a go\einment building should be ap¬
proved by a major of enginf-ers and an ''engi¬
neer in chargp," which was at least a guarantee
of sound construction, has been rescinded, and no
safeguard whatever substituted for it. Mr. Pot¬
ter maintained, with reason, that the woi'k was
too extensive^o be done by one man, and that
designs for all the buildings erected by the gov-
erniueut, if they were lo be made by one archi¬
tect, must either be unstudied, or be repetitions .
of each other. Under the militar-y control of
public architecture both the«e disatlvantages
were combined. One design was repeated as
a custom-house, po.^t-office, and Federal court¬
house in all the cities requiring such a buiLiing,
with variations only of magnitude, and this
building familiar to everybody, is of no archi¬
tectural merit. Mr. Potter's suggestion, which
was embodied in a bill, was that designs for pub¬
lic buildings should be opene j to competition,
the award to be made by disinterested expeits.
Open competitions, howover, for government
buildings, a-s the competition for the Post-oflice
in this city showed, are not apt to attract the •
architects whom it is desirable to attract. There
seems no reason why architects of standing
should not be regularly engaged lo design public
buildings. The " Sup'ervising Architect" would
in that case confine his functions to those inti
mated in his title and to such work in designing
as could be done justice to by one man.

We mean, of course, no disparagement to the
present Supervising Architect, Mr. Hill; on the
contrHry, we express au opinion, in which we
have no doubt he would concur, in saying that
the work put upon him during the present ses¬
sion of Congress is more than can be well done
by any single architect. If the Supervising
Ai'chitect be competent for his place, he is of
^course coinpetent to prepare a programme of re¬
quirements which would give a designer all the'
information that he needed, and he is competent
to select architects in different parts of tho country
who are able to do the work, so as to bring our
public architeciure up to the standard of our
best private architecture, which it h s by no
means attained thus far. A mere authorization
by Congress to the Supervising Architect, or to
the Seci-etary of the Treasury, to t*mploy archi¬
tects to design public buililings wht-never in his
■ judgment it is for the public interest to do so,
i^ovild confer this power and responsibility, and
ij would give the country a chance, which it can
not rbe said to enjoy under the present arrange-
. ment, of getting something in the way of public
• ai'chitecture to show for the money which it is