September 7, 1901.





RECORD AKD   GTJIDE:





28s







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Di/oteD to R^.L ESTME . BuiLDIf/o ft:R.cKrreCTUR.E .t(cWSEe(OlD DEBQf(HimJ,
BusifiEss AttoThemes of GEtk«^, IjftERpsT,

PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX   DOLLARS

PabUshed eVery Saturday

Communlcationa should be addreaaed to

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Vol. LXVIII.





SEPTEMBER 7, 1901.





No. 1747.





■^^ HE news of the dastardly attack on the life of President
McKinley, coming as we are going to press, leaves us no
time to do more than express detestation of the crime and our
■ sympathy with its distinguished victim. What infiuence this
event will have on the mind of the business public it would be
in bad taste at this moment to conjecture, though we fear the
movers of markets will not he affected by any such delicate
considerations. All thoughts for the moment ought to be those
of sympathy toward the appointed leader of the nation and of
maintaining the dignity of the nation itself in a moment of ex¬
cessive strain on its feelings.





y N spite of the appearance of strength conveyed to the Stock
y Market hy the clever manipulation of the past few weeks,
quotations reveal a steady realizing by holders of long stock.
Critically examined prices show that much of the gain made by
the manipulative tactics of several weeks has been lost, and re¬
cent facts add the important point that they cannot stand any
organized attack. Of course, the stocks that have been most
prominent in speculation suffer most, on the rule that it is the
most protrusive head that receives the blow. The immediately
effective cause of the break In the Stock Market is the condition
of the collateral market for money; the great impelling and mov¬
ing cause is the over-speculation and expanded values of the
spring which have not been thoroughly discounted yet. Previous
anticipations of dearer money are being realized. The real pinch
will not come until the end of this or the beginning of next
month when the interior demand should have reached its max¬
imum. Exchange is at a point which promises some relief
ihrough gold imports, but gold only comes on the invitation of
high rates for money and ceases its visits directly those rates
decline. In times of low values and depressed prices it is always
potent for good, but not except relatively in those of expanded
values. Still, as was pointed out last week, it would be easy
to organize a movement of gold this way, but there is no reason
why it should come out of the ordinary course. Europe is
watching our market with interest and evidently fears a demand
for gold from this side; otherwise the discount rates of the
great national banks would not have stood unchanged for weeks,
while the condition of their reserves and gold holdings is such as
would have ordinarily called for reductions. The Bank of Eng¬
land Is stronger now than it has been at any other time in three
years, yet its discount rates remains, week after week, at 3 per
cent. European trade reports are somewhat more cheerful than
they have been of late, but the improvement is no more than
should be expected with the emergence from a holiday season
into an active one.





\X 7 HO is to succeed the late John R. Thomas as architect of
Jt JL the Hall of Records? is a very important question, but
its solution is not assisted by the suggestion made this week
that his estate has the right to appoint his successor. If such a
rule held good, it would apply to private as well as public work,
and we cannot conceive either the public or private owners rel¬
ishing the position that this would put the heirs of a deceased
architect in toward their work. It is undoubtedly the fact that
the architect selected to complete the task that Mr. Thomas de¬
signed and began, should be a man in full sympathy with his
aims and who would receive the commission as a behest to ful¬
fil his intention and not merely as a job, obtained in the ordi¬
nary way of business. The Board of Estimate who have the
appointment of a new architect have it in their power to make
or mar a costly and important public building, and it is to be
hoped they will aquit themselves faithfully of the duty that is





placed upon them; they cannot do this better than hy following
a concensus of professional opinion which in. this matter will
not err, however wide of the mark it may be of th© legal view of
the case.





John Rochester Thomas.

^r- HE death of Mr. John R. Thomas, at the age of fifty-three,
*• calls for something more than was given in these columns
last "week, because of his general professional merits, and even if
his death did not open what threatens to be a very burning
question, who is to go on with the Hall of Records, the most
costly and important public building now under construction
in New York after the Public Library.

Mr. Thomas, it appears from the obituary notices in the daily
press, came to New York in 1882. He had been practising archi¬
tecture before that, since and perhaps before his majority, in
Rochester, and had won a good repute hy some of his works, and
the standing of an expert in prison architecture by one of them,
the Elmira reformatory, we believe it was. What determined
him to come to New York may have been his success in obtain¬
ing, in competition the commission to build the Calvary Baptist
Church in West Fifty-seventh street, or possibly he obtained
that work only after he had made his migration. At any rate
the church was finished early in 1883, for a critical notice of it
appeared in these pages in May of that year. The church at¬
tracted attention by the unusual extent of its frontage, which is
not less than 150 feet, and repaid this attention, upon, the whole
by the interest of its design. The chief fault, in the general
scheme, was the keeping of the whole front virtually in the
same plane, whereas a vigorous protrusion and recession were
evidently indicated for expressiveness. None of the detail was
exquisitely artistic, but on the other hand, none was downright
bad, and the building was upon the whole a credit to its archi¬
tect.

Practically, as a solution of the problem of an "auditorium
church" the building was so successful as to launch its author
upon a very successful career. He was probably employed, dur¬
ing the following years, to build more churches than any other
architect in the eity of his adoption. He once mentioned to the
present writer tbat he had won some incredible number of com¬
petitions, it would be risky to give from memory the exact num¬
ber, during his first year in New York. At flrst they were
mostly churches. There is a fragment of a church in Seventh
avenue, above the Park, which shows a better study of detail
than the earlier and more pretentious work, and is still worth
looking at. And the West Hariem Methodist Church, at the
eorner of Seventh avenue and 130th street, is another essay in
the chronic problem of the auditorium church which is of high
interest, of more, indeed, than the costlier edifice in Fifty-sev¬
enth street, possibly, in part, by reason of the pecuniary limita¬
tions. It is really a good thing, a nearly square plan, with a
chapel on the longer side and a parsonage on the other, and the
auditorium fairly well expressed on the outside. The tower at
the corner ought to be bigger, properly to dominate the pile, and
doubtless would have been if the architect had had the money
to make it so. But still it does fulfil its function, and with its
plain, frank shaft, its effectively deep openings at the base, its
conbelled turret, and its steep hood, one is inclined to call this
tower Mr. Thomas's most artistic performance. The inapprecia-
tive possessors of the church have spoiled it, so far as they could
by painting over its honest Croton brick, but in spite of them
it is still a welcome sight.

How Mr. Thomas got into the designing of armories we do not
know. But his Eighth Regiment Armory, at the corner of Park
avenue and 90th street, with the addition on Madison avenue for
Squadron A, is very clearly the best thing in the way of military
architecture we have to show, and doubtless the most popular
and vei-y likely the best of its author's works. This is no small
praise when we come to consider the number of able men who
have tackled the same problem in New York with less success.
The mediaeval expression of a fortress of obsolete methods of
war, the crenellations and machicolations and so forth, all this
is introduced here artistically and by way of allusion, as it were,
rather than by way of fabrication and affectation. And cer¬
tainly the result is charming of the 'big, round, red towers and
their connecting curtains. The building is one of our chief
municipal ornaments. More frankly modern, of less romantic
association and of less picturesqueness is the architect's later
work, the armory of the Seventy-first at Park avenue and thirty-
fourth street, in a monochrome of gray masonry, less attractive
than the deep brickwork of the other. But that also is a well-
considered design, though nobody would think of calling it
charming.
The fact that he got these things to do led many members of