Real Estate Record

AND    BUILDERS'    GUIDE.





Vol. XY.





NEW YOKK, SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1875.





No. 379





Published Weekly by

THE   REAL  ESTATE  RECORD ASSOCIATION.

C. W. SWEET............Presidbnt and TEEAStnsER

PRESTON I. SWEET........Secretart.

L. ISRAELS......................Business Manager

TERMS.
One year, in advance...........310 00

Communications should he addressed to   ""

C TV. STTEEJT,

Nos. 345 AND 347 B ioadwat

ADVANCED ARCHITECTURE.





Witliiu the last ten years a greater improve¬
ment in design lias beeu effected in this city
than in the whole preceding half century.
As we noted in a short article in the Keal
Estate Record, published some fifteen
months since, the best examples of this may
be found in that quarter situated between
Fifth and Lexiugton avenues aud above Forty-
second Street. Before considering more par¬
ticularly in what this step toward the estab¬
lishment of style consists, it may be well to
consider shortly those iron buildings which,
really a product of our own life, have, to a cer¬
tain extent, shared in the progress that more
especially applies to brick and stoue. Some
six years since we stated the radical objections
to iron as a building material. Those objec¬
tions were, for the most part, constructional^
holding, as w^e did, that poverty of design and
neglect of details were faults in no way de¬
pendent upon the material used, but upon the
inexperience of architects and the negligence
of iron-founders. Time has fully justified the
opinions then expressed. At least three fronts,
one on Broome Street, two on Broadway, real
cJiefs-d'oeuvre of decoration judiciously applied
to strictly mechanical construction, show that
the artistic objections so often raised to fronts
of iron were founded on misconception of its
capabilities. Even better examples may be
seen in the first story of the Stevens building
and in various single stories andiornamental
work by other well-known architects. The
constructional objections remain. They have
so evidently forced themselves upon the atten¬
tion of owners within the last two years that
we may confidently predict the disuse of iron
in entire fronts at no distant date. The opin¬
ion at that time expressed, that the real utility
of iron was as a substitute for heavy interior
columns—either large shells or of brick or
stone—has not been verified. Frankly, it
seems as il we were trying too much. The
coustruction of immense buildings wholly fire¬
proof necessitates the empleyment of columns
almost as thickly set as those of an Egyptian
temple. For such columns slender iron cast¬
ings are of course inadmissible, but we repeat
that a wholly fii-e-proof building for any pur¬
pose requiring space, light, and air is, and al¬





ways will be, an impossibility. "When Ave rec¬
ognize the fact that a light interior within a
carcass so substantial as not to be weakened
by a conflagration is the real solution of the
problem, then we shall be in a fair way to
make iron a servant, not a master.

To return to the consideration of our ad¬
vancement in design which is so evident in
our present structures of brick and stone.
Ten years since the architecture of our city
was fajrly beginning to show the effect of cul¬
tivation and study. The younger men of the
institute, succeeding to the race of " dada-
architects," graduates of the foot-rule and mi¬
tre-box, who led our national taste till 1850,
began to impress upon our streets their own
artistic sentiments. Their errors were of in¬
experience or of eccentricity, mistaken for
genius. English by taste, for the most part
their feeliugs sided with that prej¬
udice in favor of Gothic, common to most
cultivated Englishmen for the last forty years.
Whether a natiu'al love of perfection induced
their preference for the " decorated" period ;
whether peculiar conditions have combined to
weaken the effect of " early" or " perpendicu¬
lar," certain it is that their most successful ef¬
forts were in tlie former style. But the exi¬
gencies of a difl'erent country soon made
themselves felt, and the cost of production
quickly forbade the employment of any Gothic
style in its full purity. Gradually thej'- learn¬
ed, as their Euglish cousins before them, that
the spirit of Gothic architecture still possessed
the power of infusing life into the more rigid
exigencies of the present time. They chose
then that modified style strongly tinged in or¬
namentation with the flowing and bizarre com¬
position of the French school, which has been
called modern English Gothic. But again the
question of cost stepped in, and at present, in
spite of many really beautiful facades both in
this city and tliroughout the East, one of our
architects well known for his enthusiastic
bias and esthetic taste, has declared Gothic
in this country a failure. "We must respect¬
fully dift'er froin him, or at least qualify the
assertion by adding that the cost of erection
does effectually forbid any general use of that
style. A most beautiful example of a Gothic,
so hardy as to be rather French than English,
is the Reformed Church corner of Forty-eighth
Street and Fifth Avenue. In Thirty-sixth
Street, near Broadway, is a most happy church-
front of early English; and the house now
completing corner of Fifty-seventh Street and
Fifth Avenue is a perfectly successful specimen
of modern Gothic. The exigencies of cost
and situation called for some style which
should combine classical repose with Gothic
light and shade, while avoiding both the heavy
cornices of the one and the interminable de¬





tails of the other. This style was found in the
Neo-grec, though why so named it would be
hard to say, since it is neither new nor Greek.
A legitimate development of French renais¬
sance—which was always Gothic in details
and classical in composition, while Italian re¬
naissance is the reverse—it owed its birth some
twenty years since in the houses of certain
Parisian artists in the Rue des Martyrs to the
wants of modern city life acting upon whaf
has been for three hundred of years the favor¬
ite Frencli school, not untinged, perhaps, by
the Greek mania of the First Empire. Touch¬
ing on one side modern French Gothic, on the
other pure Renaissance, it is susceptible of all
variations, responsive to all thought, and in
fine seems alone possessed of that natural elas¬
ticity which is an absolute necessity of mod¬
ern street architecture. "We shall precede to
consider how, gradually impressing upon the
public taste its great merit as a style, it has
here become burdened with a solidity and
harshness at variance with its real character.





CONCRETE BUILDING.





The frequent use of concrete in recent con¬
structions, and its important application for
building purposes where strength, lightness,
and protection from fire are involved, deserve
more specific notice than has hitherto been
given to it. Concrete building has received
more attention in Europe than in this country,
but of late a start has been achieved in this
direction likely to prove valuable in all future
experiences. "We take from English sources
the following interesting and valuable review •.

Until within recent years, little or no im¬
provement appears to have been made in the
primitive apparatus for molding concrete walls,
so that only the roughest kind of building was
possible with such means. It is, therefore, not
to be wondered at that treating concrete arch¬
itecturally never received due attention, brick¬
work and stonework being more easily capa¬
ble of architectural treatment. In the use of
these materials, dependence upon the bonding
of the bricks or stones gradually increased,
and the valuable properties of adhesion and
cohesion to be obtained by the right use of
good lime, has been increasingly neglected.
Architects, engineers, and builders became
careless and ignorant of the properties and
proper treatment of lime, and the value of con¬
crete was entirely dependent on the binding
material with whicli it was compounded.
Thus lime-concrete, although possessing the
advantages of economy in materials and la¬
bor, great ultimate strength, damp-proof, fire¬
proof, vermin-proof, and other good qualities,
was subject to the greater disadvantages of re¬
quiring more time and space, and of being less
capable of high architectural treatment. The
modern system of cement-concrete building
is ft'ee from all these disadvantages, and, in
addition, possesses important advantages not
hitherto attainable. The modern revival of
the use of concrete can be traced to increased