Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view
About OCR text.
August 24, 1901.
RECORD AND GUIDE.
233
DEVoTti) TO ReaJ. Zstku . BuiLDij/o Afic^rTECTUi^ JjwaplQiii Diooifnml.
BushJess aiJdThemes of GErtoi^. IjftOfaT.
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS
Published every Satarday
Qotomm^cationa ahould be addressed to
C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New Yort
J. T. LINDBET, Buslneas Manager
Telepbone, Cortlandt 1370
'-" Entered at the Post Office at New York. N. Y.. as second-class matter."
Vol. LXVIII.
AUGUST 24,1901.
No. 1745.
The Record and Guide Quarterly for the three months, April—
June, inclusive, is now ready for delivery. All the records arranged
for handy reference. One dollar and a half a copy, or five dollars a
year. The cheapest and best system of keeping records of real estate—
conveyances, mortgages, new buildings, etc., etc. If you would like
to see it, send a postal card to the Record and Guide Quarterly, Nos. 14
and 16 Vesey st., City.
DURING the week the Stock Market has exhibited consider¬
able strength within somewhat narrow limits, but broad¬
ening and intensifying considerably towards Its close. It looks
very much as if preparations are being made to engineer an ad¬
vance with the close of the vacations, with the expectation that
the public will be then ready to return to stocks and will come
back as buyers. This can only be based upon the idea that the
flattering returns of the last fiscal year, which are now coming
along in a cheerful stream, will encourage buying and remove
the effects of the steel strike and crop damages from the minds
of investors and speculators. Between this and October a good
â– many company reports will appear and as business generally
was so prosperous in the past year, they are sure to be more or
less satisfactory to security holders; the injury to business gen¬
erally and particularly to that of the railroads, due to strikes and
crop damage, will not have had time to show itself. It is pos¬
sible that a substantial advance in prices may be made in this
interval and perhaps continued until winter. But it is also pos¬
sible that the public may return in a cautious temper and un¬
willing to accept the results of the past as a guarantee for the
future. They may come back to tbe market sellers instead of
buyers; and, if this is so, the calculations of the promoters of
higher quotations will be misplaced. It is impossible to think
that the strikes,which have been so frequent and widespread this
year, involving both large and small industries, have not dis¬
turbed business and materially reduced production; or that the
agricultural losses will not lessen the farmers' buying power
and the direct and indirect agricultural tonnage of the railroads.
In view of this fact it is crediting the public with unusual short¬
sightedness if they are relied upon to return to the market on
the long side, A good deal is made of the healtliy pecuniary cir¬
cumstances of the farmer because of the good crops in recent
past years, as an offset to his losses. This is equal to saying
that a draft upon reserve with which to meet current expenses
is as good as paying them from present profits.
A MOVEMENT of gold from India, Africa and Australia has
given better tone to tlie London money market and re¬
flectively to other European financial centres. The Bank of
England, liowever, maintained its I'ate at 3 per cent, and tbe
only changes in discount rates are those of Bombay and Calcut¬
ta which have advanced. There is an expectation that Europe
must soon ship gold to the United States, but it seems to be
based so far entirely upon the mechanical movements of ex¬
change and the fact that Europe is a large buyer of wheat from
this country. The actual result depends upon where the most
profitable use of money may be made. Then Europe is every
year a large buyer of grain from this side, and it remains to be
seen whether the increase in wheat purchases this year, may not
be offset by smaller takings of other grains. At the moment
Europe cannot conveniently spai'e any of its gold, and it fol¬
lows that every effort will be made to hold it. In no quarter
can it be said that the commercial situation has improved. All
lines of business report dullness where they do not record stag¬
nation and the returns made by the various boards of directors
of the results of operations for tbe past half yeai% only increase
the general gloom. Take the English railroads for example. In
two previous half years dividends declined despite a large aug¬
mentation of gross receipts: in the last half year there was a
further shrinkage in receipts with a still larger growth In ex¬
penditures, with the result that the dividends are the lowest de¬
clared in many years. Here we see the results of prices of ma¬
terials, supplies and labor, which were swelled in good times,
not having adapted themselves to the new condition of dimin¬
ished business. So far as world-politics effect the situation it is
favorably, tbe prices of government bonds being strong though
no new advances are to be recorded for the week.
Apartment Hotels.
THE New York Sun calls attention to the fact that during
the first seven months of this year plans were flled with
tbe Department of Buildings for twenty-two buildings classed
as hotels, and that of these eighteen are to be regarded as flrst-
class, costing anywhere from $82,000 to twenty times that
amount. It also notes that perhaps as many more hotels are
projected, and will in all probability be built some time within
the next few years. Furthermore, it finds full justification for
this eruption of hotel building in the prosperous condition of
the hotel business in New York City at the present time.
The truth is that no branch of business in any part of the
country has been more stimulated by the prosperity which began
to put in its appearance in 1896 than the hotel business in New
York. Now and then rich people from al! over the country come
actually to live in New York, but almost every American, who
has money to spend, pays an increasing tribute to the metro¬
politan hotels. The occasion for such visits are innumerable.
Large business enterprises almost necessarily involve a visit to
New York once or twice a year. Important social gatherings,
such as the horse-show, awaken the interest of all American
owners of flue horses. The habit of taking an ejtcursion to
New York by well-to-do families for the purpose of buying
clothes, and having a good time is continually on the increase.
The many people that take ship for Europe every year from this
port often pass a week or so in New York at one or both ends of
their trip. And the constantly growing number of rich western
families tbat have their summer residences in New England
rarely miss the opportunity of staying over a few days in the
Metropolis en route east or west. In short, nearly all the changes
in business conditions and in the manner in which Americans
live and enjoy themselves, augment the number of transient vis¬
itors to this city, and the consequences is that in spite of the
fact that New York is not visited as London and Paris is by
hordes of foreigners, it is accumulating a hotel population quite
as large as that of the most important European capitals.
Americans are the most restless and mobile people in the world,
and New York is the center to which all their movements tend.
But there are hotels and hotels. It must be remembered that
â– almost all the twenty-two buildings classed by the Department
as hotels are really apartment hotels, which in truth do not ca¬
ter to transients at all. They are patronized by comparatively
permanent residents of New York. The rooms in these apart¬
ment hotels are for the most part unfurnished; they are divided
in two, three, and four room suites; leases run for a whole year;
and they are called hotels only because apartments are not pro¬
vided with separate kitchens and house-keeping arrangements.
Meals are cooked in a central kitchen, and are served either in
a private or in a common dining room. The rental includes the
care of the rooms. The apartment hotels consequently is an at¬
tempt to convert a hotel into a place of permanent residence.
It is a modernized and improved boarding house, intended for
the accommodation of relatively well-to-do people, and giving an
amount of privacy to its occupants, which neither the boarding
house nor the ordinary hotel can furnish. Its precise parallel
does not exist anywhere in the world. It is, perhaps, nearer the
type of an English lodging house than au American boarding
house, but it is a devolpment of both of these types, and yet is
different from either, in that it appeals to a different class of
patrons. Even in Paris, the particular home of apartments,
nothing like the New York apartment hotel, is to be found, for
even the smallet French apartment has a kitcheu closet, rela¬
tively as small as the apartment itself, and the Frenchman
when he dines at a restaurant goes out on the Boulevards to
find it.
The fact is that the causes which are leading to the popular¬
ity of apartment hotels are social rather than economic, as may
be gathered from a few well-ascertained facts about the ordi¬
nary character of their inhabitants. Frequently (though by no
means universally) it is comparatively childless families that oc¬
cupy the apartments—families in easy circumstances, who like
to live an untroubled life, who enjoy going out to places of
amusement and restaui'ants, and who are prone frequently to
lock up their apartments and to run away on short business or
pleasure trips. It fre,quently happens that these families have
1