August 20, 1887





The   Record   and   Guide.





1079





THE   RECORD   AND   GUIDE,

Published every Saturday.

191 Broadway, IST, "Y.

Our Telephoue Call Is      -      -      -      -





JOHN 370.





TERMS:

OIVE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS.

Communications should be addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway.

J. T. LINDSEY. BuBinesa Manager.





Vol. XL.





AUGUST 20. 1887.





No. 1,014





The volume containing the new Building Law passed at the last
.sessio7i of the Legislature, the Mechanics' Lien Law and the recent
amendments thereto, the Law Limiting the Height of Divelling
House.s, and the Tenement House Law, will be out by next Saturday.
There has been an unexpected delay in the pithlieation on account
of the very elaborate indexes which ivere necessary to make it as
perfect as possible. The work is edited by Mr, William J. Fryer,
Jr., whose notes will make it valuable to all interested in the build¬
ing trade. This volume will also contain a Directory of Architects
in New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark and Yonkers The
book is handsomely and strongly bound, and will be for sale at the
office of The Record and Guide/or One Dollar.





If the Tribune story of Friday is to be credited. Mackay and Flood
are no longer bonanza millionai»-es. They made their money in
mining and in manipulating the San Francisco mining share mar¬
ket, but they have lost the vast fortunes thus acquired in unprofit¬
able telegraphic construction, wheat deals and other outside enter¬
prises. They repeat the experiences of Senator John P. Jones aud
other men who have suddenly acquired wealth. Jones is really a very
bright man in many ways. He made an immense fortune while
superintendent of the Crown Point mine in the Comstock Lode.
Whereupon he entered upon a number of outside business enter¬
prises, every one of which was unfortunate, and in the end he
became substantially a bankrupt. Flood. Mackay, Fair and O'Brien
were originally retail liquor dealers in Virginia City. They got
into the bonanza mines at very cheap pricea and made enormous
fortunes. O'Brien died rich. Fair remains rich, but it now looks
as if Mackay and Flood would be left with only moderate fortunes.





Jay Gould has recently sold $17,000,000 bonds of the Missouri
Pacific system. It is understood that the bulk of these holdings
were his own. There is much curiosity to know what he wants to
do with all this ready money. Can it be that he will turn up as
the owner of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad and telegraph sys¬
tems ? This would give him a continuous line from the City of
Mexico to Philadelphia. It will be remembered that Gould quar¬
reled with the elder Garrett because the latter would not unite
with him in a great railroad deal. He was known to be very anx¬
ious to have a share when Alfred Sully secured the option on the
B. & O. road. Certainly this vast sum of ready money is destined
for some new investment to add to the possessions of the newly-
made grandpapa.

----------»---------

The administration has done a deservedly popular act in throw¬
ing open a hundred million acres of land for settlement, which the
railroad corporations had somehow persuaded the officials of the
Interior Department to tie up for their benefit. The land gi*ant
railroad companies can, however, fairly claim that the government
policy in the past has been a bad thing neither for the country nor
for the Western settlements. There are probably three miles of
railroad we-^t of the Mississippi to-day where there would not have
been more than one if the government had not donated lands for
their construction. Then the policy of all the roads has been to
discourage land monopoly. They have striven, and in most cases
successfully, to induce settlers to buy farms near the line of their
roads. They have discriminated against persons who wished to
purchase tracts of land for speculation. The more agriculturists and
traders that settle in their vicinity the better it is for the new com¬
panies. Still the latter undoubtedly bribed the Washington officials
to tie up lands to which they had no claim, in order that when they
built their roads they could pick the choicest sections for re-sale.
This uew land policy of the government, together with the practical
opening of the Indian territory, will add to the emigration from the
East to the Northwest, West and Southwest. This movement of
population will benefit all the Western roads.





books and apparatus. It is discreditable to us as a nation that we
should tax either knowledge, science or art. Yet our impost duties
put heavy burdens upon statuary and painting of foreign origin,
while scientific books and apparatus are burdened by our laws.
What makes our position particularly absurd is that we impose a
heavy tax on the community to circulate dime novels and other
wordy trash. As we have often explained, the people of the
United States give a heavy bonus to newspapers by circulating
them in bulk for a tithe of their actual cost to the Treasury. By
a special act of Congress the cheap novels of the day are classed
with newspapers, and as a consequence Mr. George Munro and the
swarm of pirates who republish both foreign and domestic works
without giving the authors any compensation have their wares
carried through the mails at a heavy expense to the Treasury.
Nothing is said about this abuse in the newspapers, for they are
practicaUy in league with these people in robbing the Treasury.





The scientists who met in New York last wttk are quite right in
3«ina£idiii^ tbtit Cocgre^e «hculd redtice the tariff o& scientific





The Hudson River Branch Y. M. C. A.

This may not be the proper style and title of the building which
those of the men employed upon the Central-Hudson system who
are stationed in New York, or who regularly visit it, owe to the
munificence of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt. At any rate it expresses
well enough the purpose of the building, which is that of a club
where physical exercise and social enjoyment may be had under
wholesome moral conditions.

The new building, now nearly complete, of which Mr. R. H.
Robertson is the architect, measures not far from 75 feet by 45.
The principal building, at the corner of Madison avenuo and Forty-
sixth street, of about 30 feet on the avenue by 45 on the street, is
of three stories and a steep hipped roof with dormer windows over
a basement 6 feet high. An extension about 45 feet long on Mad¬
ison avenue is in two stories. The basement is of Scotch sandstone,
the superstructure of red brick, red terra cotta and tawny brown
brick, and the roof is covered with brown corrugated tiles with hip
rolls of the same material.

The main entrance is at the north end of the main building on
Madison avenue (the site is the northeast corner). This entrance
is a broad round arch with a low triangular pediment, carried by a
sheaf of columns in either jamb, or rather by a reeded pier, with a
contmuous capital—all in terra cotta. Abreast of this is a large
window—another arch of similar form and treatment, though of
course without the pediment. The wall up to the sill course of the
windows is of red brick and the jambs of the windows for the width
of the arch are of the same material, in which also the corners are
quoined, though left flush with the filling, wliich is of the tawny
long and narrow Roman bricks that have been made familiar in so
many buildings of late, and notably in the Tiffany house. The
second story has two double windows with flat arches in red brick,
the outline defined by a light moulding. The third is an arcade of
five round-arched openings, the arches and jambs in red brick in a
field of the tawny brick framed by the quoining at the angles and
by a heavy and plain arched cornice in red terra cotta. Above this
cornice is a low parapet of the same material, broken at the centre
by a large gabled dormer of three openings framed in terra cotta
between brick piers. The sides are hung with red tiles and the
gable is pierced by a bull's-eye.

In the street front the first story has a pair of round arches, the
heads, over stone transoms, filled with brick, with a grotesque
Renaissance mask in terra cotta at the centre of each. In the
second story there is one opening similar to those of the same
story in the front, with a bull's-eye adjoining. The third story is
an arcade, repeating that of the main front, and of the same num¬
ber of openings, but with an ampler space of wall on either side, by
reason of the greater length of this front. Below, this front is much
less symmetrical than the other by reason of the introduction of
the staircase at its eastern end. In addition to the openings,
already described, which occupy the western half of the front there
is at the eastern end a little arcade of three openings, the springing
line of which is the sill course of the first story windows, and
which evidently lights the basement flight of the staircase. Above
is a large round-arched window, the sill of which is level with the
transoms of the first story windows. A belt of red brick continues
around the whole building the line of the flat arches of the second
story. The dormer on this side does not stand upon the wall like
that in the main front, but is a semi-circular opening under a
gable halfway up the roof.

The extension on Madison avenue has in the first story three
segmental arches turned between ornate springers in terra cotta,
with a decorated frame between the northern two which is appar¬
ently meant to receive an inscribed tablet. The upper wall is
recessed a few inches, though the plane of the lower is prolonged
in the terminal pier, a moulded string course iu terra cotta mask¬
ing the oflfeet. The second story is an arcade of seven tall round-
headed openings in red brick, with its tawny background framed
like a panel between the projections of the terminal pier and of
the main building at the sides, the moulded offset below and the
QotnicQ above, of which th« upper member ifl t^6 ^)J't)lDttgatIott oi