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January 8, 1910,
RECORD AND GUIDE
51
ESTABUSHED^ W^ARf.HSiy^ 1868,
Dev6te3) 10 f^Ej^LEstate,BuiLDiffo i\kcKitecture,HouseholdDEGOfiATiotf.
B[Jsl^/ESS AffoThemes or GEKERftL lfiTER,Esi.,
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communicatlous should he addressed to
C. W. SWEET
Pablhfied EVerp Saturdap
By THE RECORD ANTt GUIDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F, W. DODGE
Vice-Pres. £ Genl, Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T, MILLER
Nos. 11 to 13 East 24t!i Street, New Vorli City
(Telephone. Madison Square, 4430 to 4433,)
"Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. I'., as s cniid-class matter."
Copyrighteil. ISllO, by The Record & GuiZe Co.
Vol. LXXXV,
JANUARY 8, 1910.
No. 21S2.
THE new Administration has made an excellent start.
Mayor Gaynor's appointments indicate that his only
interest in making them is to secure for the city efficient and
economical administration. Particularly encouraging is his
admirable appointment for Corporation Counsel, because this
official will during the next few years have an exceptional
opportunity for public service. Pew of the reforms that
' have been discussed recently will save the city more money
than the reform in the methods of condemning land for
public purposes—a reform, the importance of which IVIayor
Gayuor has repeatedly emphasized in his public addresses.
It is probable that the only way in which all graft and waste
can be eliminated from condemnation proceedings will be by
the establishment of a court, whose exclusive function it will
be to fix the price at which the City shall acquire land for
public purposes; but this remedy is remote, because it can¬
not be secured without a constitutional amendment. In the
meantime much can be accomplished by an agrec-ment to
hasten condemnation proceedings between the Supreme court
and the Corporation Counsel, Of course the ultimate respon¬
sibility for the appointment of competent and disinterested
commissioners rests witli the Supreme court justices, and
if they really want to save the City time and money, they
can always do so, as Mayor Gaynor did in this conspicuous
instance, by appointing Commissioners who are pledged to
the economical and quick transaction of the necessary busi¬
ness. Presumably the Justices will be more willing than
they have been in the past to secure such pledges from their
appointees. They have been severely and justly criticized
of late for the extent to which they bave allowed the politi¬
cal machine to dictate appointments of this kind, and in all
probability they will wish to avoid hereafter a renewal of
such disagreeable and well-justified attacks. They now have
an excellent opportunity of doing so. They can depend
absolutely upon the fact that the new Corporation Counsel
will not suggest men for commissionerships who will look
upon the office as an opportunity of sitting as long as pos¬
sible and collecting a maximum number of ten dollar bills,
and if they oppose him in the effort he will make to reduce
the cost of these proceedings, they will come in for an amount
of public reprobation, which they will not care or dare to
face. It may be hoped and expected, consequently, that the
new administration will be able to effect for the city a sub¬
stantial saving in this important source of graft and waste.
IT is to be hoped that the peculiar interest which Mayor
Gaynor has always exhibited in new subways will lead
him to mark the close connection existing between a lower
West Side subway for Manhattan and the extension of Seventh
avenue south from its existing termination at lltb street.
Within the next few months the contract for the Broadway-
Lexington avenue route will in all probability be let, and
after that event has taken place the prior claim of the
Lower West Side for some kind of subway accommodation
can hardly be disputed. One of the most important func¬
tions of such a subway will be to provide a quick express
service between the financial district and the centre of up¬
town business at Broadway and 34th street, and in order
that such a service may be made as quick as possible, the
lower West Side route should be made as straight as possible.
But the one way in which such straightness can be secured
will be by extending Seventh avenue to Varick street and by
widening Varick street as far as its junction with Broadway.
A four track subway which followed the course of such a
street improvement would do more for the business develop¬
ment of Manhattan than would any other proposed subway.
Not only would it connect by a direct path the two busiest
districts in Manhattan, but it would open up an intermediate
section, which is now practically wasted because of imper¬
fect means of communication with the rest of the city. It
would provide that room for business expansion in a terri¬
tory where real estate is still comparatively cheap, and would
thus increase the business efficiency of the borough. The
arguments which can be urged in favor of this combined
rapid transit and street improvement are over-whelming, and
the new administration cannot afford to delay the serious
consideration of the project. Every year of delay will
increase the cost of the land needed for the purpose without
rendering the ultimate extension of Seventh avenue any less
necessary. Already the more progressive policy adopted by
the Corporation of Trinity has resulted in the planning of
several new business buildings in Varick street, and un¬
questionably these new buildings are only the fore-runners
of many similar improvements. Admitting the necessity of
the proposed extension of Seventh avenue, the city will only
lose money by delaying its execution. In order to bring
about this combination of a street extension and subway
construction, there will be necessary a cordial co-operation
between the Public Service Commission and the Board of
Estimate, and fortunately there is, apparently, a fair chance
that such co-operation can be brought about in the near
future.
THE fact that the northeast corner of Pifty-second street
and Fifth avenue is being offered for sale for business
purposes is an extremely significant indication of the rapidity
with which business is likely to take possession of that part
of the avenue. The plot cannot become the site of a'busi¬
ness building without the consent of the Vanderbilts, aud
If they are willing to give their consent, it must mean that
they have agreed to abandon their opposition to the trans¬
formation of the district. It has been apparent for tn^.
last two years that the only way In which the part of Fifth
avenue north of Fiftieth street could be reserved for resi¬
dential occupancy would be by the purchase of practically
every lot which was owned by a doubtful person; and appa¬
rently, not even the Vanderbilts aud the Goelets are willing
to undertake the expense of such a task. Business, conse¬
quently, is to be allowed to take its course. Its course will
be slow, because the number- of desirable plots for sale is
small, and because the millionaires who own houses in that
neighborhood will not move in a hurry and then only when
business men can afford to pay even higher prices for their
property than those which now prevail on the most expensive
parts of Fifth avenue. But the process, although slow, will
be inexorable. Practically the whole of Manhattan, south
of the Park, must within the next twenty years, be overrun
and occupied by huge business buildings, simply because that
part of the borough will become more valuable for busi¬
ness than for any other purposes. The Vanderbilt man¬
sions at Fifty-second street will meet with the same fate
as the old Astor and Stewart mansions at Thirty-fourth
street and Fifth aveuue. The brownstone houses* buUt In
1SS4 by William H. Vanderbilt, occupying as they do a
whole block front will form a peculiarly desirable loca¬
tion for a huge store, and It Is not impossible that they will
be sold for such occupancy some time within the next ten
years. The Increase in the value of Fifth avenue real
estate for business purposes has been large enough, even to
swallow up the million or more which was Invested in the
old brownstone houses.
AN extremely interesting piece of real estate news was
recently published In relation to the proposed combi¬
nation of the Metropolitan and Hammerstein operas. It
was officially admitted that negotiations have been underway
for some time between Marshall Field & Company of Chi¬
cago, and the owners of the Metropolitan Opera House for
the sale of the block on Broadway occupied by that building.
The admission is of altogether unusual importance, not only
because of the removal it foreshadows of the Opera House,
but because of the new purpose to which the site of that
building will be put. It has been well known for some
time that the directors of the Metropolitan have wanted to
sell the ugly aud inconvenient building in which they are
housed at present and move further up-town, but the diffi¬
culties of removal were so great that many years were ex¬
pected to elapse before the project was carried out. Not
only was it necessary to secure a purchaser for the old opera
house, but it was equally necessary to secure before tbe sale
No official record is OMITTED from these pages.