Aprd 2,1892





Record  and Guîde.





601







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estxbushed'^ íÁw^ch 211;'^ i eee.





Drví)TED 10 f^L EswE. BuiLDif/c A^oiíiTECTaĸE .HousdJold Degofí^tioií

BUSÍIÍESS A^ÍdThEMES Of GEfjEIVl !;JT£f\ESÎ

PRICE, PER TEAR IIV ADTANCE, SIX DOLLARS.

Published every Saturday.

TKLKPHONK    ....   CORTLANDT 1370.

Communieations should be addressed to

C. W. SWEET,  14 &  i6 Vesey St.

J. 7. LINDSEY, Business Manager.







"Entered at the Post-




offlce at New Tork, N. Y.,




aa




second-class matter."





VOL.




XLIX,









APRIL




2,  1892.














No.




l,25.ĩ





111HE liquidation which Las been apparent in the atock market
-*- for more than two weeks now shows little or no outward sign
of ceasing. While the declines have been sharp and heavy the
rallies have been small aud feeble. The acceleration given to the
dechne in prices yesterday, liowever, makes it reasonable to ihink
that a stay in the downward movement, even if not of long dura-
tíon, is in order. The desire to sell is seen on all side's and its very
unanimity ought to be anindicationof early temporary termination,
However that may be, there is certainly no evidence of a near
return to pcsitive bullishness on stoclTS. Hcre and there some con-
dition or combination may afifect a particular security and
the market may show some temporary sympathy with
its movements, but while general business, particularly
the manufacturing business, is in the condition which
the quotations of prices prove it to be, there can hardly
be a return to activity on the bull fide of the stock market. Besides,
the liquidation yet sêen has not oíîset the intemperate buying in
the late and now much-lamented coal boom. The recurrence of gold
export is another veryunfavorable feature, and equally unfavorable
is the selling and consequent decline in the Vanderbilts. N(.t to be
forgotten elther wheũ a catalogue of unpromising influences is
being made are the buU points now being circulated on the Gould
issues, nor the strongly humorous flavor in the assertion that the
decline in Lake Shore and New York Central is due to the'r sale by
Vanderbilt interests in order to raise money to buy New England.
The bond market is also feeling the ejîects of the liquidation as well
as the investment stock market, and this, more than anything else,
indicates a necessity for realizing in important quarters, which
must exhaust itself before those markets or the spticulative market
can show any sound improvement.





T30TH in England and on the continent the improvement when-
-■-' ever it takes place is all in spots. The general conditions
continue to be depressing ; and the gtneral result little besides
declining prices and diminishing busiuess. The Austrian flurry,
which took place early in the year, owing to Ihe prospective
resumption of gold payments, has now given way to a depression
which will increase the difficulties which the Auatrian and
Hungarian governments are meeting in accumulating all the
gold they need. Lately Argentiue securities have been strouger
because of the report of the Governor of the Bank of Englaiid,
and because of the improved political condition of that
country. But it cannot^be said tiiat the stateof commercial affairs
in Argentina is improving. There has now been a cessation of cash
payments to tbe majoiity of the public creditors for upwards of a
yearand, tbisarrangement was entered into for the express purpose
of enabling the State to avoid for a certain time the external drain
on its resources, and above all to reduce the paper currency within
more manageable limits. Tliis has not been done. The funding of
the coupons has in reality increaaed the debt, but the paper cur-
rency appears in nowise reduced, and its depreciatiou, although not
so heavy as it was some montbs ago, is still very great. According
to the best autborities the Kepublic, in order to pay its way, must
succeed in bringing about a vvholesalecomposition with itscreditors.
This has not yet been attempted, and until it has been arranged
specie payments to the bond-holders cannot be resumed. The com--
munity cannot possibly meet its liabilities.





T





HE new building law is slowly progressing through the Legis-
lature. It is now in tbe Senate, having passed the Assembly
a number of days ago. On its passage through the Lower House
the clause which required that existing hotels be provided with at
least one continuous line of fire-proof stairs from cellar to roof was
stricken from the bill, although a reprint of the bill, subsequent to
ita passage by tbe Assembly, still containa the hotel-staircase clause.





This error, howevcr, was correeted in the engrcfsed and certified
copy transmitted from the Assembly to the Senate. The require-
ment that all public school buildings bereafter erected shall be con-
structed entirely fire-proof was retained in the bill. A new feature,
and one that will bother the Board of Education a great deal more
than the comparatively simple aud iuexpensive oue of making the
floors fire-proof, is the requirement wbicb Assemblyman Webster,
Cbairman of the Cities Committee, caused to be inserted in the bill,
namely: " Nopublicschool buildingshall hereafter be erected within
two hundred feet of a block occupied in whole or in part by a
crirainal court or prisoo, and, conversely, it shall not be lawful
hereafter to erect a crimi'-al court or prison witbin ; tbe same
distance of a public school building." Col. Webster's controversy
with the Board of Education over tbe Sylvan place site for a new
school-house immediately adjoining iu tbe rearof the new Harlem
Court House building was the actuating motive for tbe legal
restriction that wiU hereafter keep school buildings a goodly dis-
tance away from prison and criminal court buildings. The difĩi-
culty of selecting school sites wiU tbereby be inrreased in some few
cases, but the requirement tbat wiU keep school childreu away
from tbt; demoralizing sights and sounds of degraded men and
women will meet with public approval.





THE Senate Committee on Cities gave a public hearing on the
building law last Tue.sday afternoon in Albany. Amend-
ments to the bill were then presented by th6.building trades' repre-
scntatives to create a separate Department of Buildings. These
amendments provide for the transfer from the Fire Department of
the Bureau of Buildings, and from the Sanitary Bureau of the
Healtb Department of tbe Bureaus of Plumbiũg and Light and
Ventilation to tbe new Department of Buildings. The head of the
new department is to be called tbe Superintendent of Buildings, and
he is to hold office for six years, at an aunual salary of |.'),000,
The expenaes of the Department of Buildings is to be provided for
in the same manner as tho expenses of other departments of the
municipal government, but for the balance of this fiscal year the
Comptroller is to turn over for the use of tbe new department the
unexpended balancea heretofore appropriated for the tlu-ee present
bureaus, For salaries andordinary expenses tbe cost of running
the new department wiU be no greater, if as great, as that of the
presenl bureaus, but there must be added the item of rent for the
new department, With eighty to a hundred millions of dollars
going annually into new and alterations to old buildings, and an
actual addition of fifty millions of dollars yearly to the lax rolls,
whatover may be the slight additional cost for the inspection of
buildings over the systems now in vogue ^will be of small conse-
quence compared with the relief to arcbitects, builders and owners
in the saving of time and the cost of duplicatiug and triplicating of
plans, In asking the Senate to add to the buildiag law the amend-
ments wbicli will recreate a separate Department of Buildings the
builders" representatives have acted under advisement. The only
way a separate department can be attained tbis year is tbrough
amendments to the building law, aa it is too late in the session to
introduce a distinct bill with any reasonable hope of ita passage in
both Houses before the final adjournment of the Legislature,
only three weeks distant. At tbe same time, this combining of the
building law, in which there is absolutely no politics, with the pro-
visions for a separate department, in which there is more or less
politics and political patronage, is tbe very thing that the Revision
Committee, or a majority of its members, sturdily refused to do in
preparing the building law, because, to the minds of the members
of that committee, a good building law is of the first importance,
andthe cbannels of administrating the same of secondary import-
ance. But tlie step has been taken under chaiiged circum-
stances, and tbe biU was reported back to the Senate by the Cities
Committee on Thursday last, with the separate department feature
incorporated; the biU must now stand or fall as a whole. A
sanguine view of the situation would impel a belief tbat the bill
will not fail, as it bas the approval of the Mayor and all tbe otber
leaders of tbe dominant local party, excepting only one man—the
President of tbe Fire Department. Of the three fite commissioners,
one, Mr. Robbins, who is an appointee of Mayor Grant's, has been
absent in Europe; the second, Mr. Eickolî, is heartily in favor of the
removal of the bureau of buildings from the Fire Department; and
the tbird, Mr. Purroy, tbe President of tbe Department, is opposed
to tho removal and has announced bis determination to beat tbe
bill, if he can. Mr. Purroy expects to run for au elective office
this fall, a judgesbip, having recently succeeded in getting an act
tbrough the Legíslature which enables bim to ruu for an elective
office and at the same time retain his office and salary as a fire
commissioner. If he should succeed in his threat against the bill
for a separate department, later on the bulding trade organizationa
may play the fair game of turn about aud defeat Mr. Purroy at the

ballot box.

----------m----------

BOTH from the Board of Fire Commissioners and Board of Heallh
communicatioDS were sent to the Mayor objecting   to the
removal from their respective departmentsof anybureauorbureaus.