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The   Record  and  Guide.





September 13, 1885





given in explanation: for there is but one enterprise now being
prosecuted which is sufficiently comprehensive in its effect to pro¬
voke hostilities. This enterprise is found in the extension of the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to New York, an undertaking which, as
it is well known, has already cost the outlay of many millions of
capital, and must call for the investment of many additional mil¬
lions before it can be completed. Nothing could be more repre¬
hensible and exhibit greater fatuity on the part of the railway
nianagers than a continuation of the rate war for the purpose of
crippling the Baltimore & Ohio roa I. This road has always been
a disturber in railway finance simply because it had no outlet to
New York, and was forced to cut rates for the purpose of securing
traffic. How silly, then, would be resistance to an attempt at
placing the road upon an equal footing with the other trunk line
roads. A Baltimore & Ohio terminus on the harbor of New York
would be the needed pledge for its future good conduct. It is not
the division of through traffic that the railways have to fear.
There is traffic enough for all if their managers will but have the
good judgment to hold rates sufficiently above the cost of service
to make their operations profitable, and the country will be the
g«niner by the increase. Yet it looks now as if there is not wisdom
ecough in railway management to discern this simple truth, the
process of committing suicide for the injury of rival roads still being
continued. All this talk of railway rivalries in the West is but
throwing dust in the eyes of the public. The Western roads are
feeders, but comparatively local roads in their interests; and if the
rate war is to be continued it is a trunk line war, with its cause for
hostilities here in the East.





The Fiflh Avenue Railroad.

The daily papers have shown more or less temper in discussing
the project for a horse railroad in Fifth avenue. Some of them
go so far as to call it "impudent" and "rascally." This state of
mind may be natural, but it should not be encouraged. If there
were au}^ money to be made by running horse-cars through the
Mall in Central Park or down the middle aisle of Trinity Church,
aud it looked as if the scheme were practicable, there would be
people enough to snatch at the chance of getting a charter for
that purpose. It is of no use to blame them. If these particular
corporators had not taken the charter, somebody else would
have been found to do so. If it be true that none of the corpora¬
tors lives in the avenue, or has] any property interests in it, it is
nothing to the purpose. What one of the corporators called the
** sentimental objection" to the use of Fifth avenue for car tracks,
meaning the objection of people who lived there to having what
they regard as a nuisance in front of their houses, has evidently
had no effect upon the other corj^orators. For them the first
question is whether the road would pay, and the second is whether
they will be permitted to build it. It is possible, of course, that
they do not mean to build it at all, but only to get hold of a
charter that has a negotiable value to other caijitalists. This does
not concern the public aspects of the matter, or the answer to the
questions just put.

As to the first, we should imagine there cannot be much doubt
upon that point. The road would pay, and pay very handsomely.
The movement of traffic in New York is all up and down, very
little of it across. Thanks to the stupidity of the authors of the
street system of 1807, there are provided for all this movement up
and down the island only eleven or twelve streets, while for the
less important movement across town there are provided between
the Battery and Harlem Bridge very nearly two hundred streets.
If the blocks had been turned the other way, when the city was
laid out, and after the first blunder of laying it out in rectangular
blocks had been committed, the management of traffic would have
been much easier. That is to say, if the short block fronts had teen
at the north and south ends of the blocks and the block fronts at the
east and west, the short front remaining at 200 feet and the longer
at 600, there would have been forty or fifty avenues, and sixty or
seventy cross streets. The business [of the city could then have
been done very conveniently. There would have been avenues
enough to have admitted of eight or ten being reserved for heavy
trucking and eight or ten more for riding and driving in light
vehicles, while there would still have remained more than twice as
many conduits as the existing system supplies for the daUy move¬
ment up and down. As things are now, every one of the avenues
could be used as such a conduit without being superfluous. Fifth
avenue is in fact the only avenue which has not already been
brought into requisition. It cannot be doubted that there would be
enough custom for a railroad in Fifth avenue to make it pay.

The other question, whether or not the railroad will be permitted
to be built ia not so clear. It ought not to be permitted, of course.
Tne fact just mentioned that it is now the only avenue unencum¬
bered by car tracks, and consequently the only drive in the city, is
conclusive as regards the public interest. As the principal avenue
to Central Park it should be kept clear, not only of horse cars, but
pf heav^ traffic, and reserve^ for light equipages,   Tbere is no dis¬





pute that more than nine-tenths of the property holders in the
avenue would and do oppose the project. Everybody who expects
to continu<j his residence there necessarily opposes it. The hotel
keepers above Madison square are naturally in favor of it, and also
the owners of the stores that have lately crept in. But the character
of the avenue as a street of residtnce would be utterly destroyed
by the introduction of horse cars. The fact that the property
holders are opposed to it is so clear that one is tempted to wonder
how the projectors of the road expect to circumvent their opposition,
seeing that the consent of half of them is required by law before
the road can be built. The projectors will evidently bear watching,
unless, as we have intimated, they have procured a charter simply
asa basis for negotiations, as tlie old Broadway "strikers," in
Tweed's time, used to work on A. T. Stewart's dread of a railroad
in Broadway; or unless they mean to sell their charter to other
strikers and make their profit by a "quick turn" in the charter.

While it is useless to blame the corjjorators, who do not pretend
to be consulting anything but their own interests, it does seem
proper to express a mild surprise that the attorney-general of the
State, whose opposition wovild have defeated their application for a
charter, should have permitted it to be secured. He is not pre¬
sumed to be " on the make" like the corporators. He is presumed
to be looking out for the public interests. A brief season of inquiry
would have shown him lliat,evenif every property holder on the ave¬
nue acquiesced in the application, it was still his duty to oppose it in
the interest of the public at large, which absolutely requires at least
one avenue kept free from car-tracks as a drive. The best excuse
that can be made for the attorney-general is that he is entirely
ignorant of the local needs and wishes of New York, and this is a
very poor excuse, seeing he naight so easily have informed himself.





In West Fifty-Seventh Street.

The wide streets are for obvious reasons more favorable to good
architectural effects than the narrow, assuming the rectangular
street system. When we get the telegraph wires down, if we ever
do, people who have lived in New York all their lives will rub their
eyes and imagine themselves in some strange capital, so spacious
will the avenues look and so comparatively respectable even the
hum-drum old brown stone fronts. It i^ the longitudinal streets,
naturally, that are chiefly disfigured by poles and wires, that is
up-town, for down-town there is little to choose.

In the meantime an architect finds his best opportunity in the
wide cross streets. Fourteenth and Twenty-third have little
character until one goes to the extreme east or west. Thirty-fourth
street and Forty-second are not rauch better off, although the open
space at Sixth avenue and Thirty-fourth, being irregular, gives the
buildings an opportunity to be seen, of which few of them are
worthy; and tlie group of buildings near the Reservoir in Fifth
avenue, with the open square between, and the Grand Central
station in Fourth, undoubtedly give individuality to that part of
Forty-second street.

In Fifty-seventh street, however, there is much more of architec¬
tural interest. The street had the good fortune to be built up after
the brown stone epidemic had raged itself out, and when it had
occurred to rich men that the same house which would suit all
rich men equally well might not suit any rich man perfectly.
Among the earliest of the houses, since the oli Second avenue and
Washington square days, that have any character are those in Fifty-
seventh street, near the corner of Fifth avenue. That at the south¬
west corner was the best dwelling in New York, architecturally,
when it was built, and there are not many better now. It is
worthily confronted by the Vanderbilt house opposite, which is
stately and not without picturesqueness. With few exceptions, all
the houses between there and Sixth avenue have some interest,
though some are tame and others are wild.

Beyond Sixth avenue to the westward, it is not very long since
the cost of excavation made living thei*e too expensive lor anybody
but squatters and goats. The first noteworthy building in the
block between Sixth and Seventh avenues, was the gray stone Bap¬
tist Church, on the north side, which was described and criticised
at some length in these columns when it was erected. Now that
it is flanked by newer buildings it is impressive by reason mainly
of its unusual extent of frontage and of the good judgment of the
architect in securing ample masses of wall. The spire, too, is grace¬
ful and well studied, more so indeed than most of the detail in the
building proper, which can claim no higher praise than inoffensive-
ness. If the principal divisions of the building had been more
accentuated in the treatment of the exterior, as might have been
done without losing the value of the unbroken basement wall,
the church would have been even better than it is, and, as city
churches go, it is very good now. It looks all the easier by con¬
trast with the uneasy and bustling structure that adjoins it on the
east, and which may be its parsonage. This edifice has altogether
too many things for its size or their use, and the things are not
good in themselves, nor are they well combined.

To the west of tbe church again there is a row of five houses,