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May i8, 1907
RECORD AND GUIDE
963
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PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Pubtished eVery Saturday
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET
Madison Square: 11-15 East 24th Street
Tolephono
, 4480 Madiaon Squara
"Entered at the Post Office at Ifeio
Tork, A'. T., as second-class matte}-."
Copyrighted,
I90T,
by C. W. Sweet.
Vol.
â– LXXIX,
MAY
IS, IOOT.
No.
2044
INDEX TO DEPARTMENTS.
Avertising Section.
Page Page
Cement........................xv Lumber........................xs
Consulting Engineers..........vii Machinery.....................iv
Clay Products................xviii Metal AVork...................viii
Contractors and Builders........ii Quick Joh Directory............xs
Electrical Interests.............v Real Estate.....................si
Fireproofing ....................vi Roofers & Roofing Materials,.xis
Granite ........................xvi Stone........................xvi
Iron and Steel................x Wood Products.................xx
MR. HARRIMAN has occupied the centre of the Wall
Street stage this week and there have been mixed
sentiments regarding him, for among the numerous notahle
American financiers who have more or less dominated Wall
Street, Mr. Harriman certainly stands in the first rank. No
one, therefore, was surprised when the counsel to the Inter¬
state Commerce Commission came out with a recommenda¬
tion that there should be an annulment of certain mergers
and that legal proceedings should be initiated to
dissolve the union between the Union Pacific and
the Southern Pacific railway companies. This was
not all, as the recommendations included the can¬
cellation of the agreements for the acquisition of control of
the Illinois Central. Stocks promptly went down on the
publication of the report, but subsequently recovered. Sec¬
ond thoughts seemed to infiuence operators when they called
to mind that after all the report consisted of recommenda¬
tions only, and that the existing conditions so far as the
Harriman deals are concerned cannot be changed for some
time to come, as there is absolutely nothing new in the spirit
or letter of the recommendations of counsel. It is not,
however, pleasant to hear the "Alton deal" referred to by
the commission's counsel "as one of the most remarkable
cases of manipulation and stock watering ever known," a
decided refiection on Wall Street methods. Mr, Harriman
is certainly not popular for the moment and many who rec¬
ognize his ability assert that it would be better for the
railroads if he paid more attention to their physical condi¬
tion than to scheming in Wall Street in connection with
them. Commission houses complain that business is dull
and believe that there will be little activity during the
summer. Union Pacific, however, has been well bought and
much of the stock is now in stronger hands than hereto¬
fore. The general public has, during the week, been abso¬
lutely indifferent as to the course of prices. Mercantile
business has not been so good, largely attributable to the
unseasonable weather. We do not hear so much about crop
scares. They did their work, however, but the excitement
in grain subsided, wheat falling considerably aud actually
developing weakness. Call and time money showed a ten¬
dency to advance. Some say it is being kept low in order
to market prospective issues of bonds and other securities
by Delaware & Hudson, Baltimore & Ohio, Reading and
Wabash. New York Central also will soon ask for $60,000,-
000, so investors will thus have an ample choice as to the
disposition of their savings. Whether reasonable rates for
money which now obtain will be beneficial to real estate
and building interests during the summer, it is a little too
early in the season to predicate on.
statement is true of the side streets, below Twenty-third
Street, between Fourth and Sixth Avenues. A large num¬
ber of old brownstone residences on Twentieth and Twenty-
first Streets are now being torn down, and when the new
structures on those streets are finished there will be very
little, space left south of Twenty-third Street for opera¬
tions of this character. In view of this occupation of the
existing wholesale district, the question of the range of
territory to be used for its further extension becomes of
great interest. Of course a new wholesale district will have to
come into being north of Twenty-third Street; but what
line will it follow? And how far east and west will it ex¬
tend? The value of real estate on Fifth Avenue north of
Twenty-third Street is too high to be available for the
purpose of wholesale business. It looks as if the retail
trade will also occupy Madison Avenue and the side streets
off Fifth Avenue. There is a certain amount of room on
Broadway, but the recent Improvements on that thorough¬
fare have been more in the nature of office than of loft
buildings. Sixth Avenne might seem to he available, but
here again real estate values have been increased to such
an extent of late years that the erection of loft buildings
seems to he wholly improbable. The level of prices on
Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-third and Thirty-second
Streets, is adapted to its use for department stores. On
the whole it looks as if the values which the retail trade
has given to real estate between Twenty-sixth and Thirty-
fourth Streets, Madison and Sixth Avenues, would force
the wholesale trade farther west and farther east. It will
be found cheaper for business firms, needing a large
amount of well-lighted fioor space, to follow lines of Fourth
Avenue on the east aud of Seventh Avenue on the west.
Cheaper grades of loft and light manufacturing buildings
have already been biiilt in many cases on or near 'Fourth
and Seventh Avenues, but it looks as if hereafter more ex¬
pensive fireproof buildings would also he driven farther
away from the central Broadway and Fifth Avenue line by
the wedge of the retail trade. The retail trade itself will
not be pushed farther uptown, because the superior trans¬
portation facilties of this district, derived from the Penn¬
sylvania and trolley terminals, will make it more valuable
for retail purposes than for any other. The operation of
these novel conditions will be awaited with great interest,
and will necessarily produce important changes in the dis¬
tribution of business in Manhattan.
^~\ NE of the most noticeable features of the buildiug
^^ activity of New York continues to be the number of
loft buildings erected. The" construction of tenements,
apartment houses and office buildings has diminished in
volume; but there has been no diminution in the number of
buildings projected for the wholesale trade. The whole of
Fifth Avenne below Twenty-third Street is or soon will be
occupied by new structures of this class; and the same
OMPTROLLER METZ is a mau of many excellent
ideas, who is realiy trying to introduce business prin¬
ciples into the administration of the important department
of which he is the chief. His idea, for instance, of organiz¬
ing a central purchasing bureau for the whole city, which
would have power to buy the necessary municipal supplies
in large quantities and at the lowest possible prices, is ad¬
mirable, and if put into practice it would save the city many
hundreds of thousand dollars every year. But the Comp¬
troller is a resident of Brooklyn, and in his attitude towards
rapid transit he is more alive to the interests of his own
borough than he is to those of the whole city. He appar¬
ently believes that whatever money the city has to appro¬
priate for purposes of rapid transit coustruction should be
devoted to Brooklyn; and he argues that a subway built to
the outlying portions of that borough would increase the
local assessed valuations to such an extent that the city
could then afford to build subways for Manhattan and the
Bronx. In other words, the 2,7 0 0,000 people living in
Manhattan and the Bronx should wait for their improved
means of transit uutil the needs of the 1,300,000 residents
of Brooklyn have been satisfied. Surely the argument would
look more plausible when turned upside down. Why not
afford the 2,700,000 residents of Manhattan and the Bronx
the transit service they need, and use the proportionately
larger increase in assessed valuations in order to help out
the very much smaller number of people living in Brooklyn?
Moreover, this revised version of the argument is still more
plausible when we consider what is already being done for
Brooklyn and Queens, and what is being done for Manhat¬
tan and the Bronx.' The city itself is now building two
bridges across the East River at an expense of over $40,-
000,000, and it is just completing a subway to Brooklyn,
which will alleviate the existing congestion. Furthermoi^e,
it is about to spend $10,000,000 for a subway in Manhattan,
connecting the terminals of the two existing bridges, which
is intended chiefly for the benefit of the residents of Long
Island. Finally, it is improving the existing terminal of
the Brooklyn Bridge at a huge expense, which again will
chiefly benefit Brooklyn. Besides these municipal improve-