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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 30, no. 753: August 19, 1882

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MilPi Real Estate ECORD AND BUILDERS' GUIDE. Vol. XXX. NEW YOKE, SATUEDAY, AUGUST 19, 1882. Nr. 753 Published Weekly by The Real Estate Record Association TEEMS: ONE ¥EiR, in adyance • > . • < $6.00 Communications should he addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY. Business Manager. BUILDING MATERIAL. The markets for pretty rauch all descrip¬ tions of building material are showing quite a full degree of animation, indeed, m»>re so than usual at this season. How great a pro¬ portion of the supplies handled will go into immediate consumption it is difficult to de¬ termine, but buyers are certainly operating less closely to actual wants than heretofore, and will take a little stock against the pos*^!- bilities of tha near future when quality is desirable. Thi ? tendency seems to be not so much upon an expectation of a further im¬ portant advance on values as upon a belief that prices have reached nearly or quite hard pari, and production in most cases passed the maximum, with manufacturers frequently threatening a sharp reduction for want of remunerative returns. An attempt to force any of the accruing advantages just now would be ruinous, however, and we think sellers as a rule see this, their policy rather favoring the retaining of a firm grip upon prices and a steady distribution of goods affording a fair margin, until the season has further progressed to a point where buyers will have fewer opportunities to resist. Asa rule, supplies accumulated in first hands are not abundant so far as stand¬ ard goods are concerned, but some manu¬ facturers and a few importers have ordinal y stock in hand over which they feel dubious, and with reason. It has been a bad year to mako consumers believe that the lowest cost article was the cheapest, until they had sub¬ jected the offering to a trial, and too often the offering has '* been found wanting." TAXATION IN BROOKLYN. George A. Kingsland. a property-awner in the Seventeenth Ward of Brooklyn, and S. B. Duryea, the owner of a store at Fulton and Pierrepont streets, Brooklyn, have brought suits against the Board of Assessors to have the action of the board in valuing their property for pur¬ poses of taxation reviewed in the Supreme Court under, a writ of certiorari. E. and J. Rourke, the owners of No. 24 Strong plac«, have also begun proceedings to have this property exempt from taxation on the ground that it is used for the purposes of the Board of Education. This claim is regarded by the Corporation Coun¬ sel as preposterous. Commonalty and Hubert O. Thompson, Com- missioner,of Public Works, from interfering with the laying of tracks by the Ninth Avenue RaU¬ road Company for the extension of its road along the Boulevard, from Sixty-fourth street to Harlem river. The motion to continue the in¬ junction is to be heard on Monday. NINTH AVENUE RAILROAD EXTENSION. A temporary injunction was granted by Judge Donohue in Supreme Court, Chambers, on Wed¬ nesday, restraining the Mayor, Aldermen and PAINTING IRON SURFACES. This subject is becoming of more importance as iron becomes .more and more prevalent as a building material. The following: extracts from a paper read by Mr. Wm. Meeking, before the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society, Lon¬ don, furnishes some technical points of interest in relation to this subject. It says: Of the varieties of lacquers and paints used it is needless to speak at length, as the all-important point is the actual state of the iron surface when the first coat is laid on. If that is not in proper condition, nc subsequent application, however good in itself, has any chance of being permanently preserva¬ tive, and I think that that proper state is found when there has been formed upon the whole sur¬ face of the work a thin layer of the flr^t or black oxide, which has been, while hot, thoroughly permeated by and incorporated with a resinous or tarry covering. Once formed, everything goes well. Additional coats of paints may be applied from time to time to renew the thick¬ ness of the original coveiing, but the iron underneath remains uuattacked. If, on the contrary, a film of hydrate oxide (ordinary rust from exposure) be once allowed to form, the suc¬ cessive coats of paint are thrown off sooner or later, and, in the meantime, the rust has spread under the paint. A striking instance of this may be generally seen after outdoor riveted work has been in place for some time. As a rule, all the riveting is done before the final painting is com¬ menced, and each rivet-head has in the meantime been exposed to a damp atmosphere; the paint invariably commences to peel off the rivet-heads long before it leaves the adjacent plates, aud when this has once taken place nothing but a thorough scraping off of the surface will give the paint any chance of adhering. So slight are the differences of manipulation which determine whether a given piece of work shall cu* shall not rust away, that I think they may all be found in the different methods of manufacture pui*- sued now and formerly. Ta&ing the case of a piece of ornamental ironwork, which in so many instances has come down to ui in un¬ impaired beauty and condition, it would be now probably forged in detail in one part of a fac¬ tory, drilled, filed and fitted in another, and when completely finished, be painted " in three coats of beat oil pa'nt." Formerly the smith who forged the work punched the necessary holes at the same time, fitted his various pieces together ns he went on, completing each piece as he pro¬ ceeded, doing all the work with his hammer, and, to quote an old book of direction to good smiths, " brushing his work over with linseed oil, and suspending it for some time over a strongly smoking wood fire." This will give at once a sort of elastic enamel coat, perfectly • ad¬ herent, calculated to preserve the iron to the ut¬ most. To come to practical uses, it appears to me, first, that in all cases where iron is used exter¬ nally there should ba the most careful provision made for draining off water, and preventing any I'dgment in inaccessible places; second, that the iron used should be in the largest'and most compact masses possible, with a due regard to the necessities of construction, avoiding by all means such designs as are calculated to provide the largest possible surface for a given weight Of metal; third, to t ike care that, before the meta-i- leaves the iron works, and while heated, it>re-^ ceives a coat of some protective sub-tanceKSUch as tar or linseed oil, which shall - be allQwed?Jts.>; incorporate itse f with its external sur|aQe„a,nd' form a durable substratum for future covenugsr —Exchange. GOVERNMENT ARCHITECTURE. The extraordinary number and magnitude of the appropriations for public buildings made by the present Congress incidentally illustrate the large Roman disregard of the claims of art which characterizes our statesmen. The designs of these buildings are ail to proceed from the office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury. We be¬ lieve that that office has no statutory existence. Ac all events, the qualifications of the incumbent are nowhere dt^fiued, and his ai 'pointment or re¬ tention in office is entirely within the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, who is presum¬ ably not a judge of his qualifications. The archi¬ tecture of government building.^, except those in Washington, is entirely within the control of this functionary, whose professional competency no steps have been taken to ascertain. It is not surprising, thei'efore, that the su¬ pervising architects should not have beeu, as a rule, men ot high professional standing, or that the. architecture of recent government buildings should not represent the best that can be dune by American architects. It seems high time that something should be done to secure such a repre¬ sentation, when Congress is granting ten or fif¬ teen millions in a single session for public build¬ ings in all parts of the country, which must ex¬ ercise an influeuce ""'n the private building of the whole country. No European architect in modem times has had such an opportunity for the devel¬ opment of architecture as has been afforded by the lavish appropriations of the past i en years. And this great power has been given to an officer whose legal position is simply thMt of a clerk in the Trensury Department, removable at will. Mr. William A. Potter, an educated archiJec!', who held this position for some years, whi se pro¬ fessional standing is higher than that of any otuer recent incumVient, and some of whose offi¬ cial works are grateful exceptions lo the routine of government designing, remonstrated against the system which has come to prevail, and under which the old requirement that an architectural design for a go\einment building should be ap¬ proved by a major of enginf-ers and an ''engi¬ neer in chargp," which was at least a guarantee of sound construction, has been rescinded, and no safeguard whatever substituted for it. Mr. Pot¬ ter maintained, with reason, that the woi'k was too extensive^o be done by one man, and that designs for all the buildings erected by the gov- erniueut, if they were lo be made by one archi¬ tect, must either be unstudied, or be repetitions . of each other. Under the militar-y control of public architecture both the«e disatlvantages were combined. One design was repeated as a custom-house, po.^t-office, and Federal court¬ house in all the cities requiring such a buiLiing, with variations only of magnitude, and this building familiar to everybody, is of no archi¬ tectural merit. Mr. Potter's suggestion, which was embodied in a bill, was that designs for pub¬ lic buildings should be opene j to competition, the award to be made by disinterested expeits. Open competitions, howover, for government buildings, a-s the competition for the Post-oflice in this city showed, are not apt to attract the • architects whom it is desirable to attract. There seems no reason why architects of standing should not be regularly engaged lo design public buildings. The " Sup'ervising Architect" would in that case confine his functions to those inti mated in his title and to such work in designing as could be done justice to by one man. We mean, of course, no disparagement to the present Supervising Architect, Mr. Hill; on the contrHry, we express au opinion, in which we have no doubt he would concur, in saying that the work put upon him during the present ses¬ sion of Congress is more than can be well done by any single architect. If the Supervising Ai'chitect be competent for his place, he is of ^course coinpetent to prepare a programme of re¬ quirements which would give a designer all the' information that he needed, and he is competent to select architects in different parts of tho country who are able to do the work, so as to bring our public architeciure up to the standard of our best private architecture, which it h s by no means attained thus far. A mere authorization by Congress to the Supervising Architect, or to the Seci-etary of the Treasury, to t*mploy archi¬ tects to design public buililings wht-never in his ■ judgment it is for the public interest to do so, i^ovild confer this power and responsibility, and ij would give the country a chance, which it can not rbe said to enjoy under the present arrange- . ment, of getting something in the way of public • ai'chitecture to show for the money which it is