Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 37, no. 947: May 8, 1886

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May 8, 1886 The Record and Guide. 5'.7 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Publislied every Saturday. IQl Broadvsrav, IST. "S". Onr Telephone Call Is.....JOHN 370. TERMS: ONE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should he addressed to €. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXVII. MAY 8, 1886. No. 947. The disturbances at Chicago, Milwaukee and elsewhere are not calculated to help the general business of the country. The stock market recovered somewhat after the news came of the Anarchist demonstration in Chicago. The street reasoned, and very correctly, that the mass of the workingmen would disavow the use of bombs and fire-arms in their war with organized capital, and that strikers would be discouraged and strikes less frequent hereafter. But after all a check has been given to business, and as confidence is a plant of slow growth it will take time to beget a feeling of hope¬ fulness in business circles. There seems to be no abatement in real estate dealings. The number of conveyances show an increase of fully one-third over last year, but undoubtedly there has been a check given to the filing of new plans for house construction. If, however, the buying movement continues and the labor disturb¬ ances come to an end there will be a renewal of the building move¬ ment in the early fall, if not before. The correspondence we publish between the editor of this paper and the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics will be read with interest not only by owners and dealers in real estate, but by the leaders of the financial world as well. Up to this time there has been no means of ascertaining the figures which would tell the story of house construction year by year. The amounts spent for lumber, brick, mortar and the other materials which enter into build¬ ing operation? are unknown. It is only a few of the larger cities which have building departments. There is no supervision over house construction outside of .'ess than a dozen centres of popula¬ tion. The Chief of the Bureau of Statistics admits the desira¬ bility of collecting this information, but he thinks it should be done by the Labcir Bureau. This is a matter of detail, however, which is not worth discussing here. The great point is to have the general government collect building statistics as it does figures relating to crops and the movements of our international trade. It may be necessary to memorialize Congress for legislation direct¬ ing some department to attend to this matter. What a foolish business this Third avenue strike was on both sides. The company, according to the majority of the Railway Commissioners " precipitated a conflict" rather than pay the ten doUaTS a day which they had agreed to do in March, and must have losfc by the strike over $80,000, and besides will have to face the permanent ill-will of the laboring people on the east side of the city, who Imve been their principal patrons. The employes were equally unwise, for they have lost very much more than they would have gained had the strike succeeded. How much better it would have been to have referred the mafcters in dispute to an impartial tribunal. No matfcer what the decision had been, both sides and the public would have been the gainers. President Cleveland has commenced vetoing, and he is likely to use that prerogative frequently as the session comes to a close. He and ex-Governor Cornell gained a great deal of undeserved applause by their vetoing of all acts of the Legislature, good and bad. The President's veto of the Das Moines bill seems to have been entirely indefensible. It merely provided for sending a matter to the courts which should have been legally determined twenty years ago. Of course he will veto the River and Harbor bill when it passes. Ex-President Arthur gofc unbounded praise for vetoing an excellent River and Harboir bill, and the present executive will expect a good deal of cheap applause in negativing a series of appropriations, the great bulk of which are nofc only unobjectiona¬ ble, but are for improvements of rivers and harbors which are very much needed. America, to the consolidated cable companies are far more numer¬ ous than can be controlled by the Mackay new cable. If the fight continues it looks as though the younger company will be forced to the wall. The true solution of the ocean cable problem is for all the submarine telegraph wires to be put under the control of an international commission and the service so organized as to confer the greatest possible benefits on international commerce and com¬ munication. The rates should be established so as to pay running expenses and provide a fund for new construction and repairs. These occasional wars between rival telegraph and carible systems do not permanently advantage any business interests. ------------■-----------. While the State Senate has passed the bill providing for the indexing of New York realty by lots nothing has been done with the bill shortening the forms of deeds and mortgages. The Land Transfer Commissioners unanimously recommended this abbrevia¬ tion of legal forms, but our Albany correspondent says there is no reason to believe thafc ifc will be touched this session. Yet no one can read a deed, bond or mortgage, or even a lease, without being struck with the unnecessary verbiage. Our records are piled up in monstrous volumes because of the verbosity and tedious prolixity of the legal forms now in use. Bufc this waste of words is profitable to clerks, copyists and small legal concerns. Hence the burking of the bill to effect this very necessary reform. Will nofc some member of the Legislature try and get a vote so as to put the responsibility upon the members who are opposiog this needed reform. The action of the Assembly on Wednesday looks as if nothing will be done in the way of land transfer reform during the present session. The cable rate war is an interesting one, and the public ought to profit by fuller news from the other side of the ocean as the press charge is only six cents a word. Although the stock of the consol- -jdated cable companies is heavily watered, the old monopoly has yet several advantages over the Mackay-Bennett cable. Ifc is clear of debt for pne thing, while the mva| pnterprisfe carries a mortgage oltjiree million dollars. Then tj^p feeders^ |?^)j in Europe and The Improvement on the West Side. For years previous to the building movement now going on west of Eighth avenue and north of Fifty-ninth street, that region had seemed to the veterans of the real estate market like a field on which a, gallant efliort had once been made, and a hard-fought battle lost. The prices that had at one time been realized for lots on the Boulevard and the streets crossing it seemed almost fabulous in th« retrospect. The west side is naturally the handsomest part of the island ; and the Riverside Drive, the Grand Boulevard and other improvements show the efforts that had been made to con¬ verfc ifc into a fashionable quarfcer by a liberal use of money. Even the west side of Central Park has a wider drive than the east, and shows in other ways the wish of its designers to make it especially attractive. Yet those whose money was invested in that district in the times when its exipecfcations were the greatest were severely disappointed, and a large proportion of them were driven out of the field long before the present improvement commenced. When the recent hard times began to relax, and real estate seemed likely to show a little activity, much of the attention of investors and buyers was turned to this long-neglected part of the city for various reasons. The most important of these lay in high and firmly-established prices of building lots on the east side. Ifc is long since there has been much building of dwellings for the sake of the rents on thafc side, and the greater number of fchem have been built for sale to parties intending to occupy them. Fifty thou¬ sand dollars is a low price for a home in a genteel neighborhood on the east side of the city, and in a great many cases the house alone has cosfc more than that sum. It is evident that in such a situation of affairs, many people with moderate means, who had been con¬ demned to live in flats and boarding-houses, would be glad to improve an opportunity to own houses in a quarfcer of the city that should be tastefully improved by capitalists whose methods in sell¬ ing would afford a guarantee of good surroundings, and where an expenditure of $30,000 to $25,000 would secure the lot and building. Investors, too, who were tired of holding bonds that returned less than five per cent, on the value, saw that lots west of the park, judiciously improved, would afford them much larger incomes. It is said that in the history of nations, when the hour of destiny has struck, the man that the time demands always appears on the scene. It is fortunate that men of the right kind to direct a newmove- ment were at hand, when a beautiful quarter of this city only needed the capitalist wifch the quick intelligence and courage to build and improve, in order to awake to a growth and thrift to which ifc had long been unaccustomed. Good judgment has been shown by owners and builders, almosfc wifchout exception. Lots have usuaUy been sold with carefully drawn stipulations as to the character of the buUdings to be erected. The taste and tact of the architects who have designed these is very marked, and is giving a distinctive and very pleasing character to that part of the city. The styles adopted are in very many cases decidedly novel as weU as tasteful, the effects being homelike as well as artistic. The designs have won the approval even of people of very old-fashioned and conservative ideas, nofc only by their beauty and variety, but by the good judg¬ ment and originality often shown in the ground plans and aU the arrangements for convenience and comfort as well as luxury. Ifc is already certain that the west side will be architecturally, as it is naturally, the most picturesque part of the island. The east side may- jgng continue to show the most costly dweUings, with