Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 37, no. 929: January 2, 1886

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's*? January 3, 18S6 The Record and Guide. THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. IQl BroadvT-av, I^T. IT. Oar Telepbone Call 1m.....JOSN 370. TERMS: ONE FEAR, in adTance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXVII. JANUARY 2, 1886. No. 929 The bond call of Secretary Manning will help speculation in Wall street, but it will be an injury to the country. All the surplus in the Treasury should be devoted to works of public improvement— such as the construction of defenses for our exposed sea-board, the creation of a navy, the deepening of the channels which lead to New York harbor, and the like. These works are essential, and entering upon them would help the industries of the country ; but the payment of the present government debt, before it is due, is pure national idiocy. True, we save 3 per cent.; but spending this money productively would benefit us 100 per cent. Wall street does not want this ten millions of gold ; it has too much already. It is a metal, by the way, which does not circulate at all, for silver cur¬ rency is the only coin seen in the retail trade of the country. This last bond call shows an utter obliviousness of the real wants of the times. William H. Vanderbilt's will was admitted to probate as soon as all the heirs were consulted without any delay, fuss or red tape. The title of two hundred millions was devolved from one person to eight or nine without any more trouble than it takes to buy a carpet. But suppose that, instead of being in securities, the same amount of property had been in real estate, and had been sold instead of being bequeathed. Why, the various rigmarole involved would have kept all the lawyers in town busy for a week, and the fees of lawyers and brokers and searchers would have eaten up what¬ ever profit there might otherwise have been in the purchase. Oar ridiculous land laws are inherited from a time when land was regarded as something different from any other property. That wao the time when, as the poet remarks, " every rood of ground maintained its man;" so it does now. The difference is that then the man was a soldier, and now he is a lawyer. The stoppage of the nautical school by the Board of Estimate is indefensible. A cutting down of the estimate from $25,000 to $15,000 means such a stoppage, unless the estimate was outrageously extravagant in the first place; and this is not alleged. It is the result, no doubt, of the belief of the board that the nautical school is a piece of nonsense. We are not going to argue this proposition, though it is plain enough that industrial education is one of the cliief needs of this city and of this country, and the record of the nautical school certainly indicates that it has done its work well. However that may be, a "slashing" reduction of this kind, by breaking up the work of the school, virtually nullifies the law under which the school was authorized, and the Board of Estimate ha» no right to annul any law by refusing the means to carry it out. The Sun does not habitually take ground for or against any meas¬ ure, we believe, without a careful examination of its ground. But thi« cannot be said with reference to an article against the sale of the Brooklyn navy yard, pmblished in that journal last Monday. It opposes the sale without any apparent investigation of facts, and upon the single view that a navy yard is needed to aid in the defense of the harbor. Unfortunately for this argument, it is one of the strongest arguments that could be brought in favor of its removal. A navy yard should be located where it could aid in the defense of the port, but not where it would fall into the hands of an enemy, with all its aggressive equipment, if the port were cap¬ tured. The proper location is up the Hudson Eiver, beyond the Palisades, in a position that could easily be made impregnable. With regard to the local questions raised by the proposed sale of the navy yard, our contemporary does not seem to have studied them at all. The sale of the yard, if honestly managed, would be a source of large profit to the government. Everything valuable in the way of equipment or material, except the dry dock, which would be eagerly bought at a fair price by ship builders, could be removed, and the old buildings left could be duplicated elsewhere for one-fourth the money received for the land. long been idle is to be opened with a greatly enlarged capacity in St. Louis; and from Youngstown, Ohio, we hear of great prepara¬ tions for increasing manufacturing resources and enlarging the output. But what is this that comes from Harper's Ferry ? The syndicate which lately purchased the old government gun factory is going to work with such spirit that its enthusiastic attorney promises a population of 30,000 in the town within five years. Con¬ sidering that the population is now less than 2,000, this sounds like a rose-colored prediction; but there are few more available inland situations for the growth of a large cifcy than Harper's Ferry. In- exhaustable water power, adjacent mines, easy railway communi¬ cation and delightful scenery, all combine to render the old tramp¬ ing ground of the Federal and Confederate armies an attractive field for investors. The advent of the Baltimore & Ohio road to New York, too, will aid to give it closer relations with the East, and greatly improve its chances. Still, a gain of 28,000 in five years would be something so rarely paralleled even in the history of this country that we lack faith in the promise. There appears to be a boom in the manufacturing industry, and it starts fromtthe right poinlr-the iron mills. A mill which has The Real Estate Prospect. Whatever short-comings there were in the general business of the country during the past year, owners of real estate in the cen¬ tres of population have had nothing to complain of. Here, in New York and Brooklyn, we have had an exceptionally prosperous year ; and the same remark is true of Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and, indeed, all the cities of the Union with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Theji-e has been no specula¬ tion, but a steady enlargement of population, a healthful building movement, a steadiness in rentals, and a reasonable adyanco in the price of land available for building purposes. We have passed through a period of great depression in railway circles. Instead of building 11,000 miles in one year, as we did but a short time ago, we constructed last year less than 4,000 miles. Then there has been a ruinous depreciation in the price of railway securities, but there was no such experience in real estate circles. There has been no falling off in the value of land and houses, and instead of less building there was probably more in 1885 than in any previous year. Railroads were brought into existence specu¬ latively in advance of the actual requirements of tlie country, but new house construction was to meet the wants of a steadily grow¬ ing population. It is vvorihy of note, in this connection, that the period of depres¬ sion we have passed through affected the rich more than any other class of the community. It was the speculative securities they held that shrank so greatly in market value. True, there has been some disturbances in labor circles and reductions of wages here and there ; but the statistics of the savings banks showing tlie increase of their deposits prove that the wage-receiving class during the last five years, have been in receipt of better incomes than in any previous five years since 1870. The general miscellaneous business of the country has kept steadily improving and increasing; for, in no other way can we account for the rapid addition to the popula¬ tion and wealth of all our cities. The statistics we shall publish in this and next week about what has been done in real estate in New York and vicinity during the past year, will tell the story of the prosperity of our real estate interest. As they peruse tlie figures, our readers will bear in mind that a relative increase of values and transactions is also true of the other large cities of the country. But what of the coming year ? There is no reason to doubt but that 1886 will be more satisfac¬ tory to the real estate interests than was 1884 and 1885. The coming spring will see more new house construction in New York and Brooklyn than probably in any previous season; at least such is the present expectation of all who are acquainted with the plans of architects, builders and capitalists. There seems at present nothing to prevent the rapid growth of our city in inhabitants and business. The steady increase of travel on the elevated roads and horse-cars, and the Remand for largely increased accomodations for our public- school children, all tell the story of the growing numbers and future prosperity of this metropolis of the Union. Nor can it be doubted that the land of the country is steadily becoming more valuable. The rapid increase of our population and the extension of our railway system renders choice farming land more and more desirable as time passes by. There will be plenty of cheap land doubtless for the next thirty or fifty years; but really desirable building or farming realty near our transportation lines will, within the next quarter of a century, be enhanced very greatly in market value. With all its drawbacks, the ownership of land is the surest of all investments in this growing country of ours; but, of course, the largest profits will be in real estate investments, in and near great cities on the line of greatest improvement. —--------«---------- We have often commented on the careful avoidance of facts that distinguishes the utterances of the anti-silver coinage papers. The Herald, Tribune, Times, Evening Post, Financial Chronicle, and nearly all the Eastern papers denounce silver coinage without furnishing a single fact to prove their case; and keep on predicting