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May 9, 1908
RECORD AJVD GUIDE
855
Mil.
tf PUT* mea.
ESTABIJSHE)^tfJiPpHeiyNl868,
Bt/sn/ESSAife Theses of'GEifcR^l liftE«.Esi,;
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communieations should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET
Pabtlsfied Everp Satardag
By THB RECORD AND GTJTDE CO,
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, P. W. DODGE
Vic»-Pres. £ Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER
Nos. 11 fo 15 Eaat 24tli Street, Neiv York Cily
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.)
"Entered at the P<
â– jst Offiee at Neio
yorJt
;. N. Y..
as
second-class matter."
Copyrighted,
1908, by
The
Record
&
Guide
Co.
Vol.
LXXXl.
MAY
9,
190S.
No.
2095
THE Mason Builders' Association of this city is op¬
posed to the idea of having a body of men to be called
"registered constructors" in possession of the exclusive privi¬
lege of submitting plans and speciflcations and superintend¬
ing the construction of buildings and alterations in New York.
A provision which would bring such a privileged class into
existence was incorporated into the building code, which last
year's commission recommended, and the architectural pro¬
fession is represented as being in favor of retaining this
provision. It would be the exclusive right of a registered
constructor to certify upon the completion of a building tbat
the work had been carried on in accordance with the plana
and speciflcations flled, and until such a certiflcate of proper
performance was received the Building Bureau would not
have the power to issue a permit for the occupancy of the
building. In order to obtain registry as a competent con¬
structor an applicant would appear before a board of ex¬
aminers and give evidence of his capacity, and it is very
probable that some of those who have been carrying on busi¬
ness as general contractors and bu'ilders would fail to pass
the examination. This of itself might not be a matter ot
much regret, but the power which the successful ones would
hold in their hands is contemplated with apprehension.
Should a registered architect decline to issue a construction
certilicate upon the completion of a work, for any cause, the
owner and builder would be placed in a serious position. Un¬
questionably the intention of the commission of last year was
to ensure a proper enforcement of the building laws, but the
builders are apprehensive that in actual practice, under a law
of that sort, far greater evils would germinate. A recom¬
mendation which they regard more favorably is that the
superintendent, in the exercise of his discretionary power,
shall make a puhlic record of his decisions and that it shall
be allowable to cite these as precedents in subsequent cases.
Between this new safeguard and the right to appeal to the
present Board of Examiners there would seem to be no pos¬
sible way for an injustice to be permitted or a mistake to
happen.
THE latest announcement is that the block between Sixth
and Seventh avenues, Thirty-flrst and Thirty-second
streets, will be improved by a department store rather than
a hotel. If this announcement proves to be correct, the
store will be of more beneflt to tlte neighborhood than a
hotel would have heen. A huge department store attracts
more people into its vicinity than does any other class of
business enterprise. It makes other property in the same
neighborhood more than ever available for general business
purposes; and its effect will be to increase the value of
good business sites both on Sixth and Seventh avenues.
Moreover, we imagine that a department store on this block
will be a more profltable enterprise than a hotel would have
been. The Pennsylvania Railroad terminal will, of course,
deposit thousands of passengers from all over the country
at Seventh avenue and Thirty-second street, but for every
one long-distance traveler who uses the terminal there will
be ten or twenty suburban residents of Long Island aud
New Jersey. A department store would be much more
useful to the suburban passenger than would a hotel, and it
is his need^ which are likely to be coQSU'Ited. The whole
future of this neighborhood will be determined to a consid¬
erable extent by the wants of the prosperous inhabitants of
New Jersey and Long Island, In this coQDection it is inter¬
esting to note that a recent prophecy of the Record and Guide
is already by way of being fulfllled. The prediction was
made that the first signs of a revived speculative interest in
real estate would be exhibited in the so-called Pennsylvania
district, and such has in a measure already proved to be the
case, A certain buying movement on Sixth avenue, between
Twenty-third and Thirty-flrst streets, has already put in an
appearance, and tbe neighboring side streets are also being
affected by a similar agitation. There can be little doubt
that this district wilt offer the best opportunity for profitable
purchases during the next few years.
NOW that the Legislature has granted to the Pu'blic Ser¬
vice Commission the power of engaging the assistance
of private capitalists in the important work of subway con¬
struction, it is to be hoped that no time will be lost in
planning to take advantage of this power. The commission
is under no necessity of proceeding with the same caution
that it was obliged to use when its action was restricted by
the possible borrowing power of the city. It can plan a
fairly comprehensive system of Manhattan subways—to¬
gether with certain Bronx connections; and in making such
a plan it will be restricted only by the consideration that
the attempt to construct too many subways all at once will
alienate rather than attract private capital. The number of
subways which can be built is limited because only a lim¬
ited number possess a good chance of being immediately
profltable. But this limit will leave room for the immediate
building of several tunnels—provided the routes of these
tunnels are laid out to supplement rather than to compete
one with another. This last proviso is, however, extremely
important. New subways which compete sharply either with
ejcisting subways or witli each other have a much smaller
chance of being profitable than subways which do not so
compete; and in case the Public Service Commission wishes
to arrange for the largest possible increase in the means of
rapid transit, it should avoid in the routes selected the
danger of competition. It should lay out a system of new
subways, which supplement one another in creating new
traffic rather than interfere with one another or with existing
subways merely by redistributing traffic whieh already exists.
The first condition, conseciuently, of laying out a tolerably
complete system of new subways is thff abandonment of the
Broadway-Lexington avenue route upon which the commis¬
sion is already working. The laying out of this route may
have been justified when it was a question of building only
one longitudinal subway, but it is wholly unjustifiable now
that the opportunity is presented of planning a more com¬
prehensive system. The proposed Broadway-Lexington ave¬
uue route interferes absolutely with the construetion of an
economical and comprehensive subway system. To build
it as it is laid out would be to waste many million dollars in
useless competition, and in this way to diminish by just so
much the value to the public of the money.invested in addi¬
tional means of transit.
THB Broadway-Lexington avenue route would in that
portion north of Forty-second street, meet the most
critical current need for the construction of a new subway.
The upper East Side undoubtedly has a better title to a new
subway than has any other portion of the city, and any
arrangements that are made should provide for the construc¬
tion of such a tunnel with the least possible delay. But the
obviously economical manner of laying out an Upper East
Side subway is to connect it with the existing subway at
Forty-second street. To provide an independent route to
the Battery for an Upper East Side tunnel means that south
of Forty-second street the city will have two subways within
a block one of another, and none at all in the many blocks
farther to the east and the west. Competition is provoked
under conditions which make it useless, because the rates of
fare and the train schedules are fixed in advance. It strains
the resources of the two competing corporations without
benefiting the public, and it diminishes by just so much the
efficiency of the rapid transit system of Manhattan, It all
comes to the following conclusion: that the Public Service
Commission cannot do better than to return to the system
of new subways laid out by the old Rapid Transit Commis¬
sion, That system provided admirably for every possible
contingency. It provided for an upper East Side and a lower
West Side subway; and it provided for them under condi¬
tions which secured every public interest and anticipated
every reasonable capitalist demand. If the Interborough
Company could afford to offer more advantageous terms for
these two extensions, that company could secure the right