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July 3, 1909
RECORD AND GUIDE
SI
V F?,nBI.ISllED
r;T^ \ ESTABLISHED ^«\AR,CH£l^'^ 1868.
DD^TEDlOl^LEsTATH.BtnLDlKG A,R.G>(lTECTiJnE.Ho^3nlOU)DECtaiATK»f.
BiTsit/ESS At^Themes of Gi}i£T{ki If/iERESi.,
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET
Published Every Saturday
By THE RECORD AJVD GUIDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE
Vlce-Pres. & Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER
Nos. 11 to 15 East 24tb Street, New Vork City
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.)
"Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y.. aa second-class matter."
Copyrigliied, 1900, by The Record & Guide Co.
Vol. LXXXIV.
JULY 3, 3909.
No. 23 55
THE prominent property owners in Twenty-third street
have done well to form an association for the pro¬
tection and assertion of their peculiar local interests. Of
late years Twenty-third street has suffered from the compe¬
tition of Fifth avenue and of Thirty-fourth street, and no
longer occupies the supreme position it used to occupy in
the hierarchy of cirosstown streets. Moreover, the tendency
is still northwards, and if it is to be counteracted, energetic
and decisive measures must be taken to make Twenty-third
street more available both for retail trade and for general
business purposes. We believe that the widening of Fifth
avenue, while it is intended for the benefit of shopkeepers
on that thoroughfare, will, also, be beneficial to Twenty-third
street, because it will enable carriages and motor-cars to
reach that street with less delay. But in this matter the
property owners in Twenty-third street should not only
profit from the improvement of Fifth avenue but should
learn a lesson from the example. The roadway of Twenty-
third street Js wretchedly congested, particularly during win¬
ter snow storms, while the sidewalks are unnecessarily wide.
If five feet were taken from the sidewalks and added to the
roadway from Lexington to Eighth avenue, the retail trade
of all these blocks would be considerably benefited. The
other great need of Twenty-third street is the establishment
of an express subway" station at that point. The amount of
business transacted in the vicinity of Madison Square makes
it extremely desirable that the express trains on the Lexing¬
ton avenue subway should stop thereabouts. At least one
express station is essential to the business prosperity of every
important crosstown street. The existing subway provides
for the needs of Fourteenth and Forty-second streets. The
Lexington avenue subway should have express stations at
Twenty-third, Fifty-ninth and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
streets. The Seventh avenue subway will naturally have
an express station at Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets.
The new association of Twenty-third street property-owners
should immediately begin agitating in favor of such a dis¬
tribution of express stations.
THE real estate market has, during the present season,
maintained an unusual degree of activity until a very
late date; and this fact indicates plainly the vitality of the
economic forces, whereby this activity has been caused. Al¬
together it has been one of the most remarkable bursts of
speculative trading ever witnessed during a similar period
in New York City. A year ago when all kinds of business
were just beginning to recover from the effects of the panic,
the Record and Guide predicted that in Manhattan the first
outbreak of renewed speculative interest would be shown by
a buying movement on the margin of the new wholesale and
business district between Twenty-third and Fiftieth streets.
Never has a prediction been more abundantly justified. Not
only have a great many purely speculative purchases been
made in this section, but there has been an extraordinary
number of sites sold for immediate improvement. In a
few months the whole aspect of Fourth avenue from Eight¬
eenth to Thirty-second street has been changed. The al¬
teration of Madison avenue north of Twenty-sixth street Into
a business thoroughfare has been definitely begun. Several
new buildings have been started on Fifth avenue and there
are indications of an outbreak of activity in the near future
on Sixth avenue. In addition there has been an enormous
amount of scattered activity in the side streets. The worst
aspect of the movement is that it is taking place partly at
the expense of the old wholesale district south of Fourteenth
street, but the best aspect of it is its permanent and whole¬
some character. At bottom it is based upon the fact that
hereafter the business carried on in Manhattan instead of
being distributed along a line, will radiate from a centre'—
as it dees in other large cities. Of course the financial
district ivill remain iu its present location; and of course,
the whole area south of Fourteenth street and west of Broad¬
way will remain of the utmost commercial importance. But
it is inevitable that hereafter the great increase in business
will be centralized in the middle district, and that it will
radiate from this centre to the east and the west as well as
to the north. The steady process of expansion exclusively
to the north, which has up to the present time characterized
the business growth of Manhattan will be checked by the
bridges and tubes, which are tieing Manhattan to New Jer¬
sey and Long Island, and the people living on the other side
of the two rivers will want to transact their business and
gather their amusements somewhere near the point at which
they board or leave their trains in Manhattan. Roughly speak¬
ing, (he business center of the future New York will be Gree¬
ley Square; and good testimony to the general appreciation of
this fact was afforded by the recent sale of the old site of the
Union Dime Savings Bank at a figure stated to be over $350
a square foot. Lucky are those business men who secured
a situation on or near this square at the prices which pre¬
vailed a few years ago.
T N VIEW of the enormous business importance which Gree-
â– ^ ley Square is destined to have, nothing could be less
convenient and less congruous than its layout. It is by all
odds the worst-looking, most congested and least impres¬
sive square in Manhattan. Even Times Square, al¬
though laid out upon substantially the same plan is both
better-looking and more convenient, because it is not tra¬
versed by an elevated road. There is not the slightest
prospect, moreover, that anything can be done to improve it.
What is needed is more space, and a plan that would per¬
mit the traffic to circle around the square instead of intersect¬
ing it. But considering the prices now p"revailing, and the
buildings which are being or have been erected thereon, not
even New York City could afford to buy the land necessary
to do away with the present and prospective congestion.
Seven years ago when the Pennsylvania company first began
to build, the Record and Guide drew attention to the pros¬
pective business importance of Greeley Square, and to the
necessity of providing more space for the coming increase
to business and traffic. If the city had possessed at that
time the legal powei- and the prudence to purchase the real
estate within a radius of several hundred feet of the Square,
it could have made enough money from the sale of the land,
which it did not need,'more than to pay for the whole im¬
provement. But it is too late now, and the fact that the
opportunity was neglected at that time will not only be very
annoying, hereafter, to the people of New York, but it will
diminish the business prosperity of the Square itself. All
sorts of devices will have to be used in order to get rid of
the congestion. Both subways and bridges will be pressed
into service to take care of the traffic, but in the end business
will simply be obliged to go elsewhere, because it cannot be
conveniently transacted in that vicinity.
THE West Side Taxpayers' Association in the last issue
of the Record and Guide put up a very strong argu¬
ment on behalf of the early consideration by the Public Ser¬
vice Commission of the needs of the West Side for addi¬
tional means of rapid transit. Assuming that it was neces¬
sary to make a choice between the East and the West Side,
the Public Service Commission was unquestionably right in
arranging first for a Lexington avenue subway. The enor¬
mous population to the East of Central Park is in greater
need of an express subway service than are the inhabitants
of any other part of Manhattan. But after their needs
have been satisfied, the Commission will have to face' tile
problem of West Side transit. The lower West Side will
then be the only district of Manhattan wholly unprovided with
thoroughly modern means of communication; and it stands to
reason that something will have to be done to meet the
legitimate demands of the property-owners in that vicinity.
Whether a new West Side subway will extend north of
Forty-second street as is recommended by the association is
a more doubtful matter. The idea has been hitherto that
the existing subway would be carried on south from Forty-
second street along Seventh avenue, and that only some years