June 4, 1904.





RECORD AND   GUIDE





1305







they will serve their own financial ends by making lower Fifth
avenue the most  beautiful  and attractive thoroughfare  in  the

city.





De/oieD to RmJ. EsTAJt. BinLDif/c AiRcrfrrEtmiRE .KousErioiD DEeotfUDri.
Buaitfeas A)toThemes OF GEtta^l iKTtRpat.

PRICE  PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS

Pnblisfyed eVery .Saturday

Communications should be addrossed to

C.   ^W.   SWEET,   14-16  Vesey  Street, New YorK

J, T, LINDSEY. Business Manager                        Tolephono. Cortlandt 3157

•■Entered at the Post Office a( JVeio York. N. Y., as second-class matler."
Vol.  LXXni.                      JUNE 4,  1904.                            No.  1890

THE Stock Market during the past week has been heavy.
deteriorating under persistent dullness that nothing at
the present momi-'nt seems to animate with even a prospect of
approaching liveliness. Yet the industrial outlook is un¬
doubtedly brighter on the whole than it was a short time ago,
and reports go to show that retail trade is receiving a season¬
able stimulus from the advent of warmer weather. The textile
markets are better, and the crop outlook, with the possible ex¬
ception of cotton, is apparently satisfactory. Railroad earnings,
however, continue to fall off, and the tone of general business
is at best one of stolidity. There is nothing buoyant, nothing
that indicates any real anticipation of livelier times. Appar-
_ ently the most ardent desire of the moment is to maintain pres¬
ent conditions. All of this may possibly be taken to indicate
that the speculative elements have been entirely eliminated
from the situation. The tremendous impetus which the finan¬
cial and industrial condition of the country received a few years
ago has spent its force, and the most likely expectation for the
near future is that we shall witness in the commercial world a
very slow sagging away from the present level, interrupted pos¬
sibly by temporary conditions that will greatly delay and
apparently thwart the process. There are times when "things"
(including stocks) have, if we may say so, a preponderance of
purchasing power on their side; in other words, they are in de¬
mand. There is a time also when money has the greater call,
and apparently, having witnessed a period when the former con¬
dition existed, we are about to enter into a period when the
latter condition will be dominant.





WHAT the French call "L'Art Public" has only just ar¬
rived in this country as an idea or vague conception.
In professional circles and within the confines of a few art
organizations the notion and its poESibilities are, of course, well
understood, but it is naturally impossible for us to have a pub¬
lic art without a public, and at the present moment in the
United States there is very little interest, beyond a good-natured
general approval, in any project to reform our cities in the
direction of greater beauty. Utility is understood. It can be
measured in dollars and cents, but Beauty is a more indefinite
asset, and is not so easily to be calculated in concrete terms
as to its value. It is much to be hoped, however, that property
owners along the line of Fifth avenue, from Madison Square to
42d street, and even further north, could be induced to join
hands seriously for the purpose of making this shopping district
which is destined to be one of the wealthiest in the world, at
the same time one of the most beautiful. This result, of course,
cannot be obtained without a measure of co-operation, but after
all it needs only a concun'ence as to certain comparatively
minor matters in order to attain to a real degree of efficiency.
It may be taken for granted, of course, that both sides of this
thoroughfare will necessarily be improved, sooner or later, by
the erection of modei-n structures, and clearly little beauty of
general effect can be obtained if an architectural go-as-you-
please is permitted, and brick of many colors and stone of many
kinds are jumbled together with a confusion of floor-lines,
skyline, cornices, etc. In another part of this paper we print
a few interviews with some of the leading architects of this
city, and the opinions they have expressed are indicative of the
policy which property owners should adopt if they desire to
confer upon their part of New York's chief avenue a notable
and world-famous reputation. The result can be obtained
without any one owner subordinating his financial interests
seriously for the benefit of Art—a sacrifice which possibly is
not conceivable until our civilization has progressed somewhat
further. But the great thing is that with a mild measure
of personal suppression Fifth avenue property owners can do
so  much, and it hardly needs  to be  pointed  put  how  greatly





rietropoHtan Growth Northward.

WHEN a man looks at a map of Greater New York, and
feflects that it is about fifteen,miles from the Battery
to the northern terminus of the Third Avenue Railway, while it
is little more than lialf that distance to some of the most hab¬
itable portions of our southern and eastern boroughs, where
there is still plenty of room to spare, he may wonder why the
growth northward continues to be so rapid. Were it checked
for a time under the infiuence of our new municipal expansion
it would seem like a perfectly natural event, and, when we do
not look below the surface, a check would be an event to oc¬
casion no surprise. But we have seen no evidence of stagnation
even temporarily, and there are various reasons why such a
misfortune could never happen to the district now known as
the Borough of the Bronx.

In the first place, a check is not possible because the line of
least resistance for a movement of population is so generally
along water courses, and that line is so persistently sought when
a movement is in progress, that it may be said to go in ac¬
cordance with law. Harlem was a considerable center of pop¬
ulation, and there were thriving villages north of the Harlem
River, as far away as Fordham. when the Yorkville district of
New York was almost a desert sand hill. This was chiefly due
to the fact that swift steamers were plying back and
forth between the different landings on the Harlem, and
the lower end of Manhattan Island. It took the old stages,
finally displaced by equally slow horse cars, two hours or more
to go from the Battery to Harlem, and Harlem was the limit of
their service. But the steamers could touch at several landings
along the river shore, where ideal places for suburban homes
could be found, and cover the distance in half the time wasted
on the roads. Here was a great gain, and, as a consequence,
Harlem and the adjacent villages under the various and now
half-forgotten names by which they were known, grew and pros¬
pered. Agriculture, represented finally in truck farming, may
have had much to do with the earlier development of the neigh¬
borhood; but had there been no Harlem River and no swiftly
paddling "Sylvan Dell." and 'her consort, there might have
been a few farm houses and country taverns scattered here and
there through the district; but no considerable population
would have come until it had blasted and graded its way through
all intervening obstacles.

Primarily, then, it was the Harlem River which gave birth to
the material body which has been christened the Borough of
tbe Bronx, and we may see further that it is still the Harlem
River that is stimulating the phenomenal growth that that
district has displayed during little more than the last half
decade. When it was proposed only a few years ago that the
Federal Government, in the discharge of its duty, in the im¬
provement of the rivers and harbors, should undertake the
dredging of a deep-water channel between the North and the
East rivers, there were men ready to advocate even the fill¬
ing in the Harlem channel altogether, calling their sugges¬
tion the proposed removal of an obstruction to the growth of
the city. But when those men pass that way now and observe
the almost measureless piles of building material that are to
be seen along its shores they cannot help confessing to their
short-sighted view. The improvement provided more than
eight miles of new water front along water navigable for deep
draught craft, and where the Dock Department has not yet
seen its way clear to the opening of some more "exterior
streets." The omission has been a source of great economic
value to the building trades.

Observing, then, that the Harlem River, fiowing as it did
between the Hudson and the East rivers at the vei-y point where
the cut-off was most needed for the traffic of the north end.
has been the chief factor in the improvement of Harlem and
the Borough of the Bronx, we may look further and see what
other factors have been at work promoting the growth of that
section of the city. Possibly, the next factor to be found would
be the scenic features that the Borough of the Bronx can boast.
Fine scenery within the boundaries of great cities does not count
for much. In fact, ex'cept for its advantages in the location
and decoration of parks, it does not count for anything. In the
building of a city, if there is a sightly hill that is not too tall
or too precipitous to be attacked, it must be leveled down by
the builders to make it conform to the grade of the streets, and
if there are any babbling brooks they must be fllled up or
covered over for the same reason. Then, when all is done,
little remains visible except extended lines of brick, stone and
mortar, distressing or delightful to the eye, as the case may be.