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Vol, LXV.





FEBRUARY   17,   1900,





No. 166^.





The Index io Volume LXfV of the Beeord and Guide,
covering the period between July let and December 31si, 189{),
is now ready for delivery. I'riee, $1. This Index in
its enlarffed form is now recognized as indispensable to
every om engaged or interested in real esiate and huilding opera¬
tions. It covers all transactions—deeds, mortgages, leases, auction
sales, building plans filed, etc. Orders for the Index should he seui
(it once to the off.ce of publication, 14 and 16 Vesey Street,

THE stock market is in the condition known as "wanting
to go up," but is restrained by the effects of such disclos¬
ures as that relating to tbe Third Avenue Railroad. Outside
buying is yet too small to make headway against the volume of
selling the professional element can throw into the scale when¬
ever anything occurs that they think will enable them to make
one of the short turns by which they live. At first sight it was
thought that the immense profits made in iron and steel by the
Carnegie interests, revealed this week, would boom steel stocks;
but, instead, they make wise people thoughtful and hold off iu
fear of a public demand for legislation that ehall make these
profits impossible for the future. The contractor who has lost
money through the sudden and excessive rise in the price of
iron, or one who finds business hampered by the high price pre¬
vailing, will ask whether the public is treated quite fairly by
this huge combination with its book capital increase of $20,-
000,000 and profits thereon of 160 per cent., and also look in vain
for that share of benefit from improved organization and ap¬
pliances that economists tell him always comes to the con¬
sumer. The steel stocks would have advanced more if these re¬
vealed profits had been less sensational. These things, however,
must not be allowed to obscure the business situation, which is
essentially good, in proof of which it is only necessary to point
to the flattering reports from the railroads that are now piling
increases upon the eminently satisfactory results of last year.
There are indications, too, that enterprise is spreading in extent,
through new combinations and the establishment of new con¬
cerns under the stimulus of continued good prices for till
staples.





AVERY good work has been done by the Tenement House
Committee of the Charity Organization Society of this
city in opening their exhibition at No. 404 Sth Avenue, where a
complete pictorial demonstration of the Tenement House ques¬
tion is given as the Committee understands it. There it stands
in photograph, drawing, diagram and model from the low and
debased huddled in cellars to the more happy members of the In¬
dustrial classes in improved dwellings; from herding upon one
section of the city to a healthful, morally and physically, dis¬
persion upon another. Taken as a whole, the exhibition shows
probably more than its founders intended in the size and difil-
culty of tbe problem to be treated. For instance, it is not possi¬
ble to trace the denizen of the cellar into the improved tene¬
ment, and as this class of population is increasing each year,
and as the improved tenement on the big plot increases very
slowly, it follows that the present handling of the question
promises very little for them. In looking at the London ex¬
hibit, representing the first and largest attempt to deal in a
commercio-philanthropic way with the housing of the poor, we
■were reminded of a statement we met in a recent copy of the
London "Times," that, owing to their inability to secure hous¬
ing, some people, not paupers, were obliged to take refuge in
the St. Paneraa Workhouse nightly. The London County Coun¬
cil has secured power to build outside of its own county boun¬
daries in order to relieve the congestion within them, but it is
doubtful if anything they now propose to do will meet the





growth of the demand for housing that will ensue in the interval
of building. Governor Roosevelt, in opening the exhibition, re¬
ferred to the seriousness of the question it portrayed, but ha
apparently had no idea of its full extent and seriotisness wheu
be intimated that the great bulk of the work of reform must be
done by private individuals. So far, individual work in this
direction has been only a drop in the bucket, excellent and
meritorious as it has been. For causes easily to be understood,
it is extremely difficult to induce people of means to take to
tenement house building and management, either as a charity,
or for profit at investment rates, and it is not, therefore, inap¬
propriate to ask why the housing of the poor in New York is
not as bad and as inadequate as it is in London. The extent o"
pressure of population on a given area offers some explanation,
but the main reason for our superior position in this respect is
more probably to be found in better land laws and in the great-^r
building industry they permit. Our despised "double-deckers,"
bad as they undoubtedly are from an ideal point of view, have
really been doing, and stili are doing, a saving service all tha
while they have been, and still are, abused.





The Architectural  League Exhibition.

THE Malicious Philistine frequently puts the question: Wh,),t
purpose does the annual exhibition of the Architectural
League serve; at the same time affecting the opinion that tho
display is of little value beyond the unprofessional one of adver¬
tising the exhibitors mainly or partly at the expense of buildiug
material firms, "drummed" into more or less unwilling con¬
tribution to the League catalogue.

Of course, anyone who talks this way fails entirely to see how
necessary has become the form of indirection he complains of,
not only in all enterprises such as the League is carrying on,
but iu other affairs, church work for instance, the erection and
maintenance of hospitals, political activity, scientific research
and so forth. These interests, great and real as we all admit
them to be, cannot be made to stand quite alone and thus freed
entirely from the element of personal exploitation. But apart
from a general consideration of this sort (which the wise bend
to their purpose instead of fighting) it is fortunately easier to
make answer to-day to critics of the kind we are exposing than
it was, say, fifteen years ago, when tbe first League exhibition
was held.

There never was much hope for a genuine public interest in
architecture so long as it was purely an affair of fine art.    You
can't get the man in the street to bother himself with, and much
less to try, to appreciate delicacy of proportion, appropriateness
of  detail,  originality  of  design,   in  short  those  very  matters
wbich are the life of fine >7ork, rnd form, as it were, the artistic
conscience,  tbe  aim  and  inspiration  of  the  modern  architect
everywhere.    These  matters,  we al!  know,  however real  they
may be in the draughting room, have no place in the public's
appreciation of architecture.     However, the man-in the-street.
callous as he may be to tbe fine things in our architecture, is
keenly alive to "style," meaning by that, "mode" in tbe miliner'.s
sense.    "Style" is ever present with hira, even on bargain days,
as   one   of  the  most   perplexing  and   tyrannical   problems   of
modern life.    He recognizes it almost as by instinct as an essen¬
tial part of "conduct" and "reputation."   There exists, we may
say, a species of communal  obedience to it that matches tho
obligation of the good citizen in medieval times to the church or
to his feudal superior.    Even the few who are not its victim;;
will   admit   that   it  is   tbe   most   effective   commercial   device
created by the competitive spirit of our day.   There is conse¬
quently a general alertness to al! its manifestations, and we be¬
lieve that a  great step  towards  enlisting  public  attention  in
architecture was made when our architects, unconsciously per¬
haps, added to tlie other high characteristics of modern architec¬
ture tbe  element of "mode," or "style."    But "style,"  in this
sense, requires as part ot its necessary machinery for perfect
operation   some   established   authority,   ar   recognized   centre.
Capriciousness you must allow, for that  is the  secret of th«
thing;  but license is intolerable.    There must be Leaders and
tbe Led.    And herein at this moment we find tbe value of an
authoritative exhibition like the League's,    It amounts to a dec¬
laration   of  vogue, a pronunciamento   to the public, the   lesse;'
architect,   the   builder,   the   speculative   house-merchant   who,
after all, produce the greater number of our buildings.

Tbe first thing one looks for, therefore, in visiting tbe League
exhibition, is this matter of "mode," or "style." No doubt a
majority of the drawings exhibited have already appeared in tiis
pages of the current architectural papers, but here tbey are,
grouped and displayed so that one can readily obtain a general
view of what is tbe established order.
It is obvious, from the present display, that three sources uf