Febmai-y 3, 1894





Record   and   Guide.





167





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Vol. LIII.





FEBRUARY 3, 1894.            No. 1,351





For additional Brooklyn matter, see Brooklyn Department immediately
following New .lersey records {page 195).

WITH all the dullness that appears on the surface there is
no doubt that business is slowly improving. This is not
a time of year when rapid progress can be expected; if the
record of failures are less aud the reports of trade fi'om different
centres are not couched iu the gloomy terms that have been
characteristic of them for so long a time we ought to be satisfied
and encouraged. The prob.ible falling otf in the voliune of
money coming to New York ouglit (.also to be signiticiint of a
better state of things throughout the country, and further stim¬
ulation will be occasioned in <i short time from now when
renewed ii^-iciUtural activity calls money fi'om this
centre to the interior. Wall .street has uot been
a very dull place in the past week, though the
amount of business done has been small, because interest has
been excited in the fate of the issue of bonds by the Treasury
and of the Wilson TaiiH" bill. But the .success of the bond offer
and the passiige of the bill have had surprisingly small influence
on prices, showing how utterly indifferent the public is to the
stock market. This indifference was also miinitest when there
was a danger that Mr. C.irlisle's otifer of bonds would not be
accepted by investors, though that would not have lasted
long, becaii.se such a failure would undoubtedly have had most
serious consequences, and we would have seen activity, but in
the wrong direction. Tlie service done the financial community
by Mr. John A. Stewart and Mr. Edward King iu making the
issue a success has not been fully appreciated. It is remarkable
that up to almost the last moment they were the only men having
any influence in the matter, who saw that Wall street could not
aiibrd to let the issue fail. How near it came doing so is shown
by the total of the .subscriptions which wasonlyabout $12,(100,-
000 more than the amount subscribed for in New York at the
last moment under the persuiisions of the two gentlemen men¬
tioned above. The presidents of the great banks of this city
coolly contemplating the failure of the loan after the Secretary
of the Treasury had come to their doors to urge
it on them, suggests the pictiu'e of a man calmly smoking
a pipe while seated over an open barrel of gunpowder.
Great credit is, therefore, due the gentlemen who did take a
proper view of the situation and made the loan a success. Now
that the tarift' bill has passed the House, people are speciUatiug
on the time it will take in passing the Sen.ite and what changes
it will undergo in the process. From all appe.irances there are
some months of anxiety ahead before the measure will be tiiially
disposed of, and during which the recovery of business ^vill be
retarded, though the depression has been so long continued and
the economies on all sides so great that it would seem that at
least the small rate of improvement we have seen recentl.v must
continue in spite of tarift' discussion.





THE failure of the competition for a new miiuicipiil buildiug
may pretty safely be tiiken for granted. The fact that the
Mayor lays the blame for the failure on his professional ad-visers
is at least an acknowledgment of the failure itself. It is impossi¬
ble, so long as the conditions of the competition are observed,
for anybody to form a judgment upon the merits of the designs
or the findings of the architectural judges. Thttt is one of the
misfortunes of the situation. Whatever may be the value of
public criticism it is certain that the plan of withholding infor¬
mation from the public uutil a choice has been made is not
popular and tends to promote the fiiilure of the competition. It
does not at all follow that the failure of the competition is a
public misfortune. To us it seems rather a matter for public
congratulation. The plan was ill-digested from the first. In
the first place there is a want of reason in opening new parks
down town at the public cost and at the same time closing -with





big buildings the parks already existing, which are moreover
bordered with towering buildings, the owners of which built
imder an implied covenant that the park would remain open.
To cover tiie City Hall Park with a new City Hall would be to
reduce at once and very seriousl.v the rental value of the big
buildings facing the Park on Park row ;ind ou Broadway. The
city can aft'ord to buy land tor its new building
and the Ebu street improvement would oft'er an excellent
chance to get a site cheiip, and at the same time to enhance the
value of adjoining property if the fixed idea had uot taken
possession of the authorities that the new city hall must be in
the old city hall park. Still more unpromising is the condition
that the old city hall must go and that the Tweed court house
must stay. To tear down the one public buildiug .that good
citizens are proud of iind grateful for, and to keep staudiug
another public building that good citizens are ashamed of and
resent, is a queer way of projecting " an ornament to the city."
In cities of which their citizeus have reason to be proud the
preservation of good old buildings is as much au object of
municipiil and public care as the erection of good new ones. The
plan for the new building was au outrage fi-om the beginuiug,
and it was extremely unlikely that a good result could come
from a piece ot vandalism like that proposed. The failure of
the competition is a respite for the old City Hall, and that is an
excellent thing. It is not likely that another competition will
soon be undertaken. Before it .happens, it is to be hoped that
there will be a public sentiment of which municipal officers will
have to take notice, not ouly against pulling down the old City
Hall but against putting up any new buildiugs in City HaU Park.





Municipal Vandalism,

THE New York approach to the Brooklyn Bridge just now
presents a spectacle deeply discouraging |to those who take
an interest in the embellishment of the city and in its progress
in civUiziition. Ever.y body knows that wheu the bridge was
completed, ten years ago, it was decided that the irou stnicture
that would practically have served the puiiiose would not be
dignified or monumental enough to be suitable in the approach
to so great a public work, aud that it was worth while to incur a
considerable greater expense for the sake of making the
approach worthy of the city. Architects of stiindiug were con¬
sulted about the treatment of the approach. The result was the
massive viaduct of masonry from Piirk row to Franklin square
that is about the most massive and impressive piece of public
woik in New York. The architecture of the approach is uot
exquisite, but it is dignified. The arches that span the streets
traversing the approjich are impressive by their magnitude, and
some of them are highly picturesque objects. That one which
spans North William street in particular was a very etfective
structure.

It is scarcely credible that the present authorities of the bridge
have gone to work to destroy this approach, and to waste all
the money that was spent for the sake of mttking it worthy of its
puiiiose. It seems th.at the switching accommodations at the
New York end are too restricted, and that more space was needed
on each side of the approach. This emergency presented a dif¬
ficult architectural problem in the design of the addition
so as not to interfere with the monumental aspect of the
work. Perhaps it could not have been managed without
some injury to the appearance of the structure, but the
attempt was at any rate worth all the skill that could
have beeu commanded. But the problem did not disturb the au¬
thorities in the least. They simply commissioned some railroad
engineer to devise something that would carry a wagon-road on
each side of the bridge. He went to work in tlie usual method of
therailroiidengiueer,.who has no more notion of art than a hog is
vulgarly said to have of a holiday, to eftect the practical pur¬
pose in the cheapest way. He has built ii liideous and vulgar
iron stnicture of whichthe obtrusive ugliness entirely destroys
the eftect that a more enlightened administration spent so much
money and took so much pains to secure. He has not only pro¬
jected this abomiuiition so as to render all the offices in the
.archways of the approach unten.antable and unavailable,
except for storage lofts and, of course, greatly to
reduce the income of the bridge from this source. He has loith-
lessly torn oft" for a quarter of a mile or so the parapet of the via¬
duct and the corbels beneath it. The total result of his labors is
the conversion of one of the few public works iu which a civilized
citizen can take pride into one of the many public works of which
every ci-vUized citizen must feel ashtimed. The thing has been
done iu so thoroughly wtiuton and brutal ti way that it is plain
that nobody concerned has ever given a thought to what was in
the minds ot the original builders of the bridge wheu they made
considerable sacrifices in order to make their bridge an orna¬
ment to the city, in addition to a convenient way of crossing the
river. The work is a vivid illustration of the remark of an
enlightened European that public works are executed iu America
without reference to art. But this is an extreme instance
of vandalism. . We do not. recall any. other quite ao atrocious.