Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 37, no. 953: June 19, 1886

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June 19,1886 The Record and Guide. 797 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. 191 BroadA^rav, IST. "5^. Oar Telepbone Call is.....JOHN 370. TERMS: ONE YEAR, in adTance, SII DOLLARS. Gommunlcations should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXVII. JUNE 19, 1886. No. 953. Index te Advertisements. FAOS Architects........................vi., viii Architectural Terra Cetta...... iv Architectural Wood Work...... viii Artificial Stone ................. i Asphalt Pavements............. viii Bankers and Brokers........... vi Bell Hangers.................... ix Blinds....................vii., viii., ix Block Book..................... iii Bluestone........................ v Books on Building.............. vii Bdilders....................... vii Builders' Hardware............ iii Cabinet Work..................i., iv., v Carpenters and Framers........ vii Cements....................i., iv., v., ix Chimney Tops, &c............. iv Copper Works................... i Counsellor at Law............... viii Door Openers.................... iv Doors, Sashes and Blinds........ v Dumb Waiters.................. iv., ix Electrical Work................. vi Elevators..................... vi.,ix Enamelled Bricks.............. vi Fire Escapes.................... . iii Fire Insurance.................. v Fire-proof Material............iv., v., vi Flexible Fences................. v Folding: Chairs................. iii Gas Fixtures.................... i Grates, Fire-places ,&c.......... i HodElevators................. v., vii Hollow and Porous Brick........ vi Houses and Lots for Sale....... ii House Movers................... ix Iron Cornices and Mouldings... vi Iron Railings.................... ix Iron Works..................... iii Lumber Dealers......v., vi., vil., viii., ix Marble Works.................vi., vii., ix Manhattan Construction Co..... vi Masons.......................... vii Mason and Builder.............. vii Masons' Building'Materials Mineral Wool............... Mortgage Broker........ .. Painting.................... Photographer............. Pianos........................ Planing, Sawing and Moulding MiU........................ Plasterers..................... Plate Glass Insurance........... Plumbers and Gas Fitters...... Plunbers' Supplies. • ........... Rail for Sliding Doors........... Ranges....................... Real Estate.................i., ii. Reflectors...................... Refrigerators................... Roofing ......................... Rubber Goods .................. Sand........................... Sand Screen..................... Sandstone....................... Sash Holder..................... Sculptor........................ Second Hand Building Material. Sewer Pipe.................... Sheetlron...................... Shell Lime..................... Skylights ...................... Solid Relief..................... Stair Builders................... Steam and Water Heating Appa¬ ratus ....................... Steel Shutters................... Stone Cutters .................. Stoneworks.................... Tiles............................. Wall Papers .................... Waterprooflng Process ......... White Lead...................... Window Shades................ Wire Lathing................... Wood Mantels................... VUl., IX viii lu., vu vii., ix world, but ships propelled by wind are out of date. It is the steam water-craft in which the world to-day is intensely interested. Doubtless, yachting is a manly and healthful recreation, but it is very expensive, and thus, necessarily, the amusement of a few rich men. When the yacht America won the cup in the year of the first world's Exposition in 1852 the carriage of ocean freights was practically confined to sailing ships, hence the superiority of the American model was a matter that justified the exultation of the American people. But the fuss made over the proposed yacht races to retain the America's cup is entirely unwarranted. Even if the English yacht should finally wrest the trophy from its American holders it would make no great difference, for superior sailing vessels no longer give a commercial nation any advantage over those which have slower ships. We led the world with our frigates and clipper ships when sailing was the only method of propulsion at sea. The lamentable feature of the case is that foreign steam fleets and navies are now far ahead of ours. Instead of a first-clasa naval power, our place is in the rear ranks, and any nation with an iron-clad fleet has us at its mercy, as we have neither ships, guns or fortifications. While this is the case it is humiliating and dis¬ heartening to see the popular interest in the contests between these costly toys—the yachts of Great Britain and the United States. The best news of the week is the bull market which has been under way in Wall street. Speculative activity in stocks is gener¬ ally followed by an improvement in general business ; for somehow a rise in securities stimulates all manufacturing industries. The country is really bare of goods. The dull season of the year is upon us, but this spurt of prices in the Stock Exchange will give manu¬ facturers courage to enter upon new enterprises with the expecta¬ tion of finding a market for their goods in the fall. Our working classes have nothing to complain of as their wages have been prac¬ tically increased by the cheapening of all articles they consume, which has been going on for years past. The two, three or four dollars per diem which skilled artisans now receive' represents one-third more purchasing power than the same sums would have done ten years ago ; hence we are dispossd to look upon the imme¬ diate future with a good deal of confidence, as the laboring class are the spending class, and they will use up more consumable goods in the years to come than they have in the years that have passed. --------•-------- Inquiry among the real estate dealers reveals quite a buoyant feeling. Business is dull, as was to have been expected at this time of the year, but prices are firm, and there is a fair demand for eligibly located houses and lots. Our " Out Among the Builders " this week is unusually full. Our architects are now doing quite a heavy out-of-town business, as will be seen by the information they have furnished our representatives. While the building plans in this city show a handsome advance over the same period of last year, it is a notable fact that there are fewer houses under way or contemplated in Brooklyn than last year. The fact is, house building was rather overdone in our neighboring city after the Elevated road commenced running, but somehow the emigration from New York this last May was not as large as usual, and the number of residences which are unoccupied have served as a warning to Brooklyn investors and builders. The speculation in house building in Brooklyn in 1885 was clearly excessive. We suspect that the building in the first six months in 1887 in New York will not be as extensive as during the first six months in 1886. There is no utility in yacht races. Time was when the model of a sailing vessel was a matter of interest to the whole commercial Jacob Wrey Mould. Mr. Mould was in his sixty-first year only when he died last Mon¬ day, but already he seemed to belong to a past generation of archi. teets. But this is not because his work had been superseded, nor even because the public taste had grown away from it. It was because of late years he had been so little employed in conspicuous works, and this again was a result, not of any distaste for his work on the part of the public, but of his personal qualities and defects. In spite of an industry quite equal to his talent he was so lacking in business qualities that he never took the place in his profession as a practitioner which belonged to him and was accorded to him as a designer. Indeed, his very best work was done when his own position was practically that of a draughtsman in another archi¬ tect's office. Jacob Wrey Mould was born in London in 1825, and seventeen years later was graduated at King's College, London. His intellec¬ tual interests were, and remained to the end of his life, architecture and music, and they amounted to passions. Eight years after his graduation he met Owen Jones and became his pupil and his assist¬ ant in the preparation of the monumental work of the "Alhambra," which has had more influence upon architectural decoration than any other book ever published. Its influence upon architectural decoration can be likened only to that produced in architecture proper by the publication of Stuart's work on Athens nearly half a century earlier. Mr. Mould's share in this work tended to bring out and educate his fondness for color, but he had too strong a sense of the necessity of structural expression to be led by his two years of residence in sight of the Alhambra into admiring or imitating the expanses of dead wall that form its exterior architecture. His master, Owen Jones, was purely a decorative architect. When¬ ever he was employed to design a building the result was a tame, inexpressive and entirely uninteresting outside. Luckily for Mr. Mould the Gothic revival had then begun and had developed from an ineffectual reproduction of mediseval forms to a comprehension of the relation of these forms to mediseval constructions. The curates and "pedants had given place to strong and accomplished architects, and it was the work of these that impressed and influenced Mr. Mould. With this equipment of an intelligent sympathy with what the best English architects of his day were aiming at, of an unsurpassed knowledge of Saracenic art in Spain, and of a remarkable fertility of invention and device and af acility of draw¬ ing perhaps even more remarkable, Mr. Mould made his way to New York, where he landed in 1852, at the age of twenty-seven. Of the buildings in which a New Yorker can now take any interest the City Hall and some of the parish churches of Trinity represented a bygone time. The only specimen of the newer architecture that was engaging the attention at least of English architects was Trinity Church, which had then lately been completed. Mr. Mould came to this country, it is said, ai the instance of Moses H. GrinneU, to design a Unitarian church. At any rate his first employment was to'designthe Church of All Souls, better known as "Dr. Bellowa's," and satirically as the "Church of the Holy Zebra," at Fourth avenue and Twentieth street. The design of the church can not be fairly judged from the building, inasmuch as the executed structure lacks the square, unbroken companile that was to form an integral part of it. This mass of solid color would have subdued into a detail the striping of red and white, which is now all that the casual passer notices. But even as it stands the church is to be reckoned one of our good churches, and when it was built it was a distinct promise of a better state of things than then prevailed. By the public it was regarded as merely " queer." This church, though highly original, contained evident reminiscences of Italian Boman§