ipnl 26, 1902.





RECORD AND   GUIDE.





739









^                                 KTAEUSHED^ HfSt^BSl^ 18S8.

Df/ottD to F^L EstATI . BUIL0I^'G AfS^ITECTURE j{oUSnl01I) DEBtHfUDlI,
Btls■^;ESS Alb Themes ofGetJer^. iKERfST.

)?RICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX   DOLLARS

Pttbllshed eVers Saturday

OoojTxiunicatlons sbould be addreaeed to
C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New YopK





(. I, LINDSET, Busineas Manager





Telephone, Cortlandt 81B7





" Entered at the Post Office at New York, JV", 3'., as second-class matter.'





Vol. LXIX.





APRIL 26, 1902.





No. 1780





TJie AprilN'limber of the Arcliiiectural Secord, devoted to illus-
traiioiisofthc icorhs of Mr Ernest Flagg, is now ready for delivery.
It contains a kwndred reproductions of huildings designed by Mr.
Flagg, with an explanation ofilieir character, and a critical intro¬
duction. Utis number is the final issue of the Arcliitectural Becord
as a quarterly magazine. Hereafter it icill be published every
month, audits character broadened, so as to cover noi only archi-
tectifre aud ihe interests immediately attached to it, but the remoter
departmenis of Fine Art Design, lhe subscription price of the
monilily puhlicaiion will be $:t.00 a year—25 cents for each copy.

IN the Stock Market business has been active and o£ increasing
volume, with the proportion of commission-house buying
growing larger all the time. Buying is encouraged by indefinite
talk of combinations and of new developments, but the most
conservative brokers look upon prices as high, and while they
would advise new buying along careful lines, if there should
occur a break of four or five points, at present tbey assume a
non-committal attitude, simply putting themselves and their
forces at the disposal of their customers, but refraining from
offering decided views. The buying in the bond division is also
very large and of necessity largely in the least credited of
secured issues, such as income bonds. This like the buying in
low priced stocks is based upon an opinion now become very
generally accepted, that under tbe new conditions prevailing,
both of business and of control of the railroad systems, there
is a great future in store for any kind of railroad security. That
view has been held in other periods of prosperity and con¬
sequent optimism. What eventually followed it is not necessary
to recite. Our own view of tbe present conditions in the Stock
Market is, tbat a reaction is going on from the depression tha(
followed the panic of last May; that prices of the leading
securities will not reach tbe high records they made last year
and tbat when the downward movement is resumed they will
be carried lower than they have been since the panic. There
are two things that stand as obstacles to an extravagant ad¬
vance: Crop conditions and the Government's movement against
combinations. Tbe first are misrepresented according to the
effect desired, but it must be admitted by tbe most unprejudiced
tbat the agricultural season opens unpropitiously. As to the
legal proceedings against the Northern Securities Company,
their seriousness can best be estimated by Mr. Hill's remark on
tbe action of the Supreme Court granting leave to tbe State of
Washington to begin suit against the company. What, says
Mr, Hill, in effect, does it matter what the Government do,
we bave the property in any event! But tbey had the property
hefore they formed the Northern Securities Company. Surely
something was gained by the formation of that company, and
if whatever was gained is taken away, doesn't it matter? If
that it does not, why did the astute gentleman who organized the
company go to so much trouble and expense, for it was a mat¬
ter requiring a great deal of thinking and hard work, and tbe
paying out of a good deal of money too.





THE application of tbe Fuller Construction Company to have
tbeir stocks quoted on the regular list of the Stock Ex¬
change, was something to be expected from the developments
of the hour. It was natural that the company should take this
step to give their stockholders a market; and it will be interest¬
ing to note, flrst, how the Listing Committee regard the
securities of. a corporation of this nature, and, second, in the
event of the stocks heing accepted for quotation on the Stock
Exchange, what attitude the speculating and buying public
will take toward them. Whatever the fortunes of this particu¬
lar venture, it shows whither the business of buying and sell¬
ing the securities of construction and realty corporations on
commission is drifting, unless realty interests do something to





intercept it. So far they have given no sign of sincere intention
to keep this business to themselves, which is not in accord with
their ordinary energy and enterprise. The developments that
have led up to the incorporation of building and realty busi¬
nesses show too how right in their fundamental idea the found¬
ers of the late Real Estate Exchange were, even if the policy
tnrough ^bich they expressed it was unfortunate. The ac¬
cumulation of capital in a real estate exchange proper could
easily create and hold the market for securities predicated on
land and its development. To-day there are neither the means
nor the machinery apparently in sight, and the husiness as a
matter of course is flowing to Wall Street.





The Bowery.

-To the old saying "the way of the trangressor is hard," ought
to be added the words, "but the way of the regenerate is harder."
In its improved form the iproverb would apply to more than in¬
dividuals. There are certain thoroughfares in New York City
that have had unenviable notoriety because of the character of
their occupants, and of the affairs carried on therein, which has
clung to them iong after the causes had disappeared. In some
cases this notoriety is almost or quite forgotten by the present
generation and there are others that are still striving earnestly
to- outlive their past reputation. One of the latter is the
Bowery. The efforts made to regenerate that thoroughfare will
be successful in the- end and that end is not far off, but success
is delayed more through thoughtless sensation mongering than
by any vice or immorality that may linger there.

At the moment the people who have been working for two
years or more to rid the Bowery of its obnoxious features and
have -been eminently successful, are wrought up into a condition
of natural indignation by the publication of an article in last
Sunday's issue of the "Herald" which sets out to prove tbat the
conditions that gave the Bowery it^ reputation of thirty years

■ ago are still rampant there.   Judged by the facts as they exist

■  to-day, and ordinary standards of morality, the article is as great
afraud upon its innocent readers as ever was perpetrated by an
old-time denizen of the Bowery on the unsuspecting wayfarer
within its purlieus. What reputable men doing business on the
Bowery think of it will be seen by a letter given on another page
of this issue. The article and its illustrations occupy a page. There
is a two-inch headline "The Paradise of the Criminal;" a second
headline in inch-long letters, "The Bowery is Morally as Bad
as it waa Thirty Tears Ago;" three-quarters of a column of text
purporting to describe places and people on the Bowery made up
of criminal reminiscences expressed in thieves' slang, and a
column and a half of confessions of a criminal who does not dis¬
close his identity, in whicb tbe Bowery is never once men¬
tioned. These with the illustrations make up the indictment
against the Bowery, The principal illustration is a view of the
section of that thoroughfare that happens to contain the ex¬
pensive bank buildings which have been erected under the im¬
pulse of the new movemefitpand other buildings in which the
awfully sinful businesses of the florist, tobacconist, hatter,
clothier, jeweler, etc., are carried on. There are other illus¬
trations which people who may be believed say could never have
been taken in the Bowery at all, because the subjects do not exist
there.

All this is very unfair and to be deprecated on moral grounds.
The economical effect of this and similar publications is to keep
respectable people, who are unacquainted with the real state of
affairs in the Bowery at the present time, from attempting to do
business there if they are so disposed, and the actual injury to
property and commercial values that can be estimated in dollars
and cents, is quite considerable. Sometime ago we pointed out
■the opportunities for realty development presented on the
Bowery by reason of its changed character, the extent and im¬
portance of the thoroughfare and its relation to other lines of
travel and to the new bridge, etc., and this presentation still
holds good. The energetic protective association, whose officers
make the protest before referred to, have rid the thoroughfare of
its objectionable establishments wherever they have found them,
and stand ready to proceed against any others that may ap¬
pear. What remnants of old-time objectionableness still linger,
do so with the knowledge that overt acts of questionable char¬
acter will arouse this powerful organization to repressive action,
"Wuatever obstacles stand in the way and whatever discourage¬
ment foolish newspaper articles like the one complained of
cause, one thing is certain-that under the vigilance of the prop¬
erty owners' association and the physical changes that a grow¬
ing travel and commerce are compelling, the Bowery is fast be¬
coming too important for vice to keep any hold upon it.    The

■day is coming when the Bowery will be as free of the reputation
of bad resorts as lower Broadway is to-day'■ of-the gambling

-housestbat TO? tiHie^purlgbe4-there,          ........





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