November 27, 1897.





Kecard and Ouide





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the Britisii Board of Trade, some might be led to thinlt; that the
United States had never done business away from home before
to-day.





agm^iBGS.





Dnárjûi To Rej^lEstajĩ.Buildí^'o A^RfifrrEcmJHE.Ko'JSEtíoiiiDEWSîjTiat
Busiiícss AfÍD Themes of Gf|lER4l IKtehesi .

PRICE     PER   YEAR     IN   ADVANCE    SIX   DOLLARS

FubUsheil every Satu7'ãay'i

TKLBPHONE,            ,        -        ,        .            CORTLANDT   1370.

Cûnimuiiications ahould be addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street.

J I. LTNDSEY, Business Manar/cr.





•Entered at tlic Posl Ojfiae «í Xew Yorlí, j\'. Y.. as second-elass maUer."





Vol. LX.





NOVEMBER 27, 1897.





No.  1,550





THBRE is no change in the attitiide of the stock marlĩet;
waitĩng conditions continue to prevail, with weakness the
tendeney rather than strength.thoughthe declines effected do not
amount to much. As the next movement depends npon the
attltude of Congress towards the Cuban and curreney questions,
everything bearing upon the latter, even in the remotest way, is
naturaĩĩy discussed. It is always the case that a number of
prominent members of hoth houses pass through Wall Street on
rheii' way to Washington, just before the assembling of Con-
gress, and they are always closely questioned on the nature of
coming legíslation. So far as it has shown itself this season,
the procession of lawmakers en route through Wall stveet has
made a good impression and created the idea that Congress, as a
whole, and the administration are as one in desiring that noth-
ing should be done to check the improvement in business that
has so obviously been made. Judged by the statements reported to
have been made by both Senators and Representatives, the com-
ing Congress is to iDe a busĩness one, or as a prominent Senator is
saîd to have inelegantly put it, a buli Congress—which wilĩ de-
vote itself to measures for advancing business and avoid the
temptation that a daring minority is sure to present to them of
indulging in jingo antics. These are fĩne promises, and we hope
they may be kept, though it must be borne in mînd that they are
made by a few men for a very large body, whose real intentions
are very difficult to gauge, and who may be swerved from good
intentions, if they have any, by the occurrences of the hour.
However, there is a hopeful tendency in the Street, based on
beliefs of what Congress will or will not do that speaks eneouv-
agingly for the immediate future, at any rate.





EUROPE is snffering from an attack of, what may be called,
industrial fîdgets. A few extra foreign orders placed in this
country have hrought forth warnings against American competi-
tion from heads of governmental departments out of all propor-
tion to the eause and wíth suggestions to meet it still more dis-
proportionate. That the United States, with its ĩarge population,
immense resources and untiring energy and enterprise should be
in the eontest for foreign trade ougnt not to surprise any one. Nor
need it be taken for otherwise than granted that it will continue
in the flght until it has achieved a high position for itself. If
the commerce of the world had no power of growth, this new
competition might be the serious thing it is made out to be. But
the demands are growing year by year, so that new alds are
absoĩutely required to maintain the supply. Mueh of the talk of
Britaín's commercial loss, for instanee, is the erudest lĩĩnd uf
stuff aud unwarranted by au examination of the statistics. Ger-
many is supposed tb have taken away a part of her trade, and
the United States is now, the alarmists say, to take away more,
yet It will be found that Britain has all the time had an increase
of foreign trade more than proportioned to the increase of the
foreign trade of the world, and has consequently been an actual
gainer rather than a loser. If Germany has entered British mar-
kets as a seller, she has also gone into them as a buyer. Before
being seared by what they conceive to be the probable results
of American competition and conveying their fears to their
countrymen, European statesmen should get a few smart sehool
boys to work out some sums for them in the line indicated
above; and competent inquirers to ascertain how far the capture
of recent orders by American flrms is due to their ability to sup-
ply a particular article "which could not be obtained at home,
or to pressure of orders upon home machĩnery, or idleness of the
latter because of strikes. Unfortunately for seientific and math-
ematicaĩ truth, statesmen do not obtain their positions because
of their ability to handle these questions themselves, conse-
quently they often utter sheer nonsense when dĩseussing them, of
wMch assertiou CountGoIuehowski has reeentlyshown the truth.
By the tone of his and the address of Mr. Ritchie, President of





THE   NEW   HOTEL   RENAISSANCE

THIS edifice, at the southwest corner of 43rd street and Fifth
avenue has succeeded in attracting the attention which it
seems to have been designed largely in order to attract.    Some
of this it owes to the contemptuous contrast its design exhibita
to that of the old Hotel Renaissance, of whieh the new is practi-
eally an extension, and architecturaily a censure.    The old is a
simple-minded sort of edifice wîth a two-story basement in
white marble, having a little portieo of two orders at the en-
trance, a four-story superstructure in yellow briek and cream
colored terra cotta, and a crowning attie with a rich modillioned
cornice and a parapet, ali in terra eotta, and every pier occupied
with an elaborate cartouche.     This story is the feature of the
front, which has no other except the row of canopied and bal-
conied windows which oeeupies one of the intermediate stories
without apparent reason why it might not as well occupy any
other.     Vertically there is no composition except what is in-
volved ĩn giving two stories to the basement of a seven-story
building, and one to the attie, whieh does not here estahlish a
harmonious relation;  and laterally there is no eoraposition at
all, the openings, exeept the portico, beíng equally spaced from
end to end.    The eolor of the front is rather taking and the de-
tail not at all bad.    Until its new neighbor arrived it seemed of
an amiable though weak aspect.     The new building undoubt-
edly has the effect of exposing it, emphasizing its lack of compo-
sition, its thinness and its vacuity, so as to show us how feeble
and ridiculous it is in its simple-minded artlessness.     Whether
this was done through design or through want of design does not
cIearlyappear,anddoesnotmuchmatter. Itis certain that the new
designer has not made any reference in the way of deference to
his predecessor, his material being a monOchrome of light lime-
stone in place of the white marble and yellow baked cl'ay, and
not a line of the older building being produced in the newer,
except that, apparently by chanee, the main cornice of the newer
coincides with the sill course of the attic.    The effect, like the
effect of all tne juxtapositions of pretentious and architectur-
esque buildings in Forty-third street, is what they call in New
England "unneíghborly," and enhances the general impression
of the vicinage of being an architectura! miiseum rather than
an architectural  quarter.     "They  manage these things hetter
in France."     And this makes it the more odd that architects
who have learned their art in France should show so little con-
sideration  to   the  unities the   observance   of  which   goes   so
far towards making Paris a city, and the neglect of which goes
so far towards keeping New York a mere agglomeration.     Aa a
matter of fact, some of the most staring and lamentable incon-
gruities of our recent building have been inflicted by architects
who had just come from studying the immense advantages of
congruity and conformity.    Whatever may he the cause of the
injurious effiect of the new building upon its neighbor, nobody
would dream of imputing want of design to it, considered by
itself.    It would he hard to point to a recent building that is
desígned so much, or composed so elaborateĩy.    The plot which
it occupies is only 25 feet on the avenue by 125 on the street.
But even the narrow front is triply dívided laterally as well as
vertically, and the triple division of the wider is subdivided into
a fivefold partition.     None of the seven stories anywhere re-
peats another, even to the repetition of one of the principal
openings.

Moreover, it should be said at onee that the eompositĩon is
effective and successful as well as elaborate. The primary mo-
tive is the design of the avenue front, which ís repeated at the
corner of the street front, so as to eonvert this end of the build-
ing into a paviĩlion of twenty-five feet square, a pavillion dístin-
guished from the curtain not by projection but by very emphatic
quoining. A part of this pavilion is agaJn repeated at the other
end, and a symmetrícal composítion of thís front aĩso secured,
the center occupying three-flfths and each wing a fifth of Its
whole expanse.

The basement of the avenue front is oecupíed by a round areh
occupying the whole of it, except what is required for the ample
piers. The joints of the masonry are emphatĩeally defined. The
arch itseif is simply treated, having only a coneave cut at the
arris by way of moulding, but thé keystone, or rather the top of
the arch, for severaĩ voussoirs are comprised in it, is signal-
ized by an enormous cartoucbe, flanked by heavy consoles car-
rying a light balcony, of which the panels are rather encrusted
than perforated, so close and so nearly solid in effect it is.
Cartouche, consoles and baĩcony ali contribute to mark the divls-
ion of the basement frora the superstrueture and to make a feat-
ure of the demarcation. The remaining stories are treated wlth
a close similarity, which is not yet identity.     The feature of