Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 34, no. 859: August 30, 1884

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Au^st SO, 1884 The Record and Guide. S89 THE RECORD AND GUIDE. Published every Saturday. 191 Broadway, N. Y. TEKMS: ONE ¥EAR, iu advauce, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to €. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSKY, Businesa Manager. AUGUST 30, 1884. The frost to the north and east of us early last week chilled the stock market. It iviade the bull operators apprehensive that the next visitation might strike the corn-growing region of the West and Northwest. Should there be frost in any part of the corn belt within the nest two weeks, the bears would soon get possession of the market. Luckily tbe corn is some two weeks in advance of its growth last year, and if there is no serious frost up to the 15th of September we are tolerably sure of a yield of nearly two billion bushels of corn which, if secured, will " whoop up" prices on the Stock Exchange. All the recent reports are very good, but it bas been a cool summer here East, and an untimely cold wave is among the possibilities. The events likely to affect the stock market are, first, the fate of the corn crop. This will be settled by the second week in Septem¬ ber, and then look out for a decided rise or fall, the former if the crop is a good one and the latter if it proves a partial failure. The next thing to affect the market will be the result of the State elec¬ tions preceding the struggle in November. If the Republicans do well in Maine, Vermont, West Virginia and Ohio, it will be inter¬ preted favorably by the street, as it will end the free trade agita¬ tion for a couple of years. Cleveland, it is conceded, would be a safe President, but his election would encourage the free traders to reopen the tariff question, and that. Wall street infers, would be bad for business. As the news from China comea through English channels, and as John Bull just now is anything but friendly to his nearest neigh¬ bor on the continent, we may expect that the doings of France in the far East will be put in the worst possible light. A repulse will be called a defeat and a victory a massacre. The American press should be on its guard in this matter. But, of course, in this Chinese war France is as clearly in the wrong as was England in the bombardment of Alexandria and the attack on Araby Bey. It was plunder in one case and black-mail in the other. The sympathies of the civilized world ought to be with China. Of course she will be whipped in the end, but it is to be hoped that she will fight with enough vigor to make other nationsreluctant to attack her without cause. China is in far better trim to defend her shores than is the United States, for she has a modern navy and many Krupp guns, while we 'are absolutely defenseless, for which Robeson and the Republicans and Randall and the Democrats are about equally to blame. ----------•---------- It is exasperating to some Americana at least that all the great powera should be intent upon extending their commerce while the United States looks on supinely. We have no ships, no colonies, no navy nor prospect of either. Yet here is France, Germany and Great Britain annexing distant territories, founding colonies at the antipodes, and subsidizing steamship lines to all parts of the world. We have no foreign policy for we have neither ships nor navy of our own ; henoe our political discussions are contemptibly low in tone and temper. The political press of the day is divided into two camps; one trying to prove Mr. Blaine a rascal and the other Mr. Cleveland a libertine. Our national issues gives them no better themes to discuss. firming power after this year, we believe Mr. Edson would make excellent appointments and win the good will of the community. If a new man is needed, why not Cliarles A. Dana or Oswald Ottendorfer, Still the ideal candidate would bs Theodore Roose¬ velt. To him we are indebted for the reform in the city govern¬ ment, aod he ought to be given a chance to prove that he ia as good an executive officer aa he has been a legislator. Joseph J. O'Donohue is said l^to be John Kelly's candidate for next Mayor of New York. Should the Democrats of all factions agree on O'Donohue, KeUy, it is said, will support Cleveland. If the bargain is made all good citizens should unite to elect a better candidate for Mayor. Mr. O'Donohue is personally honest; indeed what popularity he possesses ia due to his having acted as treas¬ urer for certain religious bodies, but he is no more fit to be Mayor thau Maud S. is to be Pope of Rome. Johu, Kelly has missed it every time in his selection of a Mayor. All of his candiaates have turned against him, from Wickham to Edson. He appears to have hit upon O'Donohue because of the latter's conspicuous incapacity in transacting public business. The present Mayor would fill the bill far better. He may uot be an ideal chief magistrate, buthe has had a very hard part to fill, which was to serve the public without tfliLditg the Aldeimen. As the latter will be stripped of the oon- On the West Side. The one-sided development of Manhattan laland is a standing sub¬ ject of wonder to the comparatively unfortunate people who bought land on the west side twenty or thirty years ago, some of which is still available as goat-pasture or market garden, while corre¬ sponding sites on the eaat side are occupied for miles with populous tenements. There are a great many explanations of the discrep¬ ancy possible, and some of them are frequently offered. The ultimate explrnation probably is that people capable and desirous of owning elegant villas are not so numerous as people who are compelled to live in tenement houses. The elevated road, which has built ap Yorkville solidly and is rap¬ idly filling up the space atill left between that eminence and Harlem flats, bas, of course, given a fillip to building on the weet side also. In proportion to the total building activity the amount of archi¬ tectural interest Js much the same on both aides. You may walk for many blocka on either side without seeing anything of which you have not seen many blocks before. When the Riverside Drive comes fully into fashionable use, it is to be hoped that the archi¬ tectural opportunities, the use of which will make or mar the avenue for which nature has done so much, may be intrusted to good hands. If the building consists of detached or semi-detached villas, as it is to be hoped it may, the chances for skilful and picturenque design will be very much better thau if we are to have a repetition of unbroken street fronts. There ia time enough, however, to think about all that, although the new quarter cannot be too early committed to a syatemafcicaDd uniform plau of improvement, and the West Side Association might properly-take the subject in hand. In the meantime, after we go beyond the very interesting "Dakotah" apartment house, a.nd the not less interesting row of houses behind it by the san?e architect, Mr. Hardenbergh, there ia not much of interest or promise. Au apartment house at the corner of Ninth avenue and Ninety- eighth street is a striking illustration of a conjunction which we have pointed out in other cases of absolutely commonplace archi¬ tecture with skilful and artistic decoration. Each front is com¬ posed of two ends flanking a slightly recessed ceutre, the centre having five openings in each story and each end two. The open¬ ings of the basement are round arches of stone, with shafts of pol¬ ished granite in the pavilions. Then come four stories of square- headed openings, and then a balcony, not yet in place, though the shapeless iron brackets which are to carry it are visible. Above this are too more storiesi, emphasized by pilasters at the angles of the pavilions. These pilasters are furnished with capitals in sheet metal, very meagre in design and mean in ijffect. So far there is nothing worthy of the slightest notice iu the building. The deco¬ ration is confined to the basement and the openings of the pavil¬ ions. These latter are closed with enormous flat arches iu terra cotta, simulating triple keystones, and above each is a pediment of the same material enclosing a mask. This feature, essentially ugly aud raeia ningless as it is, is nevertheless carried out correctly enough in the atyle of Louis Treize. The really artistic work occurs in the decoration of the spandril of the basement, and consists of groups of objects arranged with grace and modelled with great skill and spirit in Italian Renais¬ sance. It is quite impossible that the designer of the architect¬ ure proper could have had anything to do with the design of the detail, and there ia a queer incongruity in plastering these pretty bits of modelling upon the expressionless face of this building. The good modelling is absolutely without relation to the structure and therefore without architectural significance, and thia fact, though in itself a fault, is fortunate when the discrepancy is so wide as it is here. On Eighty-fifth street, near the Boulevard, is a round and straightforward piece of brickwork, a chapel to a church which ia yet to be built. In its isolated state it naturally looks uugainly, but of course that is not to be imputed to the designer as a 'fault. What is built is a two-story edifice with an unusually steep roof and of which only a narrow street front ia " treated." This consists of a subordinate baaement with three small pointed archea grouped at its centre, and a principal story with large traceried windows aligned over the openings below. The wall is of aelected common brick of a good color, made more effective by contrast with the more vivid red of the pressed brick and terra cotta which are used in conjunction with it. The arches are composed of pressed brick which is also used in occasional belts, while the tracery of the upper windows is in terra cotta, which is also used in a diaper