Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 39, no. 996: April 16, 1887

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April 16, 188'? 1 he Kecord ^nd Guide. Ill THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. IQl Broad^v^ay, IST. "^, Our Teleplione Call is - - - . - JOHN STO. TERMS: ONE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXIX. APRIL 16, 1887. No. 996 While the business of the country continues to improve some friction is being developed, due to the operation of the Interstate Commerce law. The former deadheads are angry at the cutting off of their privileges. Then the Grand Trunk ard Canadian Pacific are taking freight at cut rates, and this has helped to depress the shares of the American trunk lines. The large estab¬ lishments which had the benefit of special rates are very naturally aggrieved at losing their former profits and advantages over their rivals in business. In some cases there is a threatened stoppage of old industrial enterprises. We look for quite a clamor against the Interstate law and a demand for its repeal when Congress meets again, but we do not believe that either the community or the rail¬ roads will be willing to dispense with the protection this law gives them. Amendments, however, will be in order, but the great danger is that they will be in the interest of the railroad corporations, not of the public. in wages, which gives a renewed impetus to all the operations of commerce. The Columbia College celebration was a memorable affair, but it invites a comparison with other colleges that does not redound to the credit of the New York institution. Its Law School does good work and its School of Mines is an admirable institution, but its Arts department is very far behind less rich and pretentious seats of learning. There are few names of note among the alumni of Columbia for the last forty years. This college did far better work early in the century than of late years. New blood is required among the professors ; fully two-thirds of the present instructors should be retired and their places taken by more advanced thinkers and scholars. The graduates of Columbia make good business men, and are well thought of in social circles, but they make no mark in the world of letters, science or advanced thought. There should be no more money given to Columbia unless it promises to do better in the future than it has done in the past. But apart from the disturbance created by the action of the Inter¬ state Commission there is an undeniably bullish feeling in the stock market. Promoters of promising enterprises find no diffi¬ culty in selling bonds, and hence specialties are in high favor in Wall street. As for real estate there is a veritable boom under way in many different parts of the country, especially in the South and West. Indeed the craze for paying high prices for unavail¬ able land is assuming dangerous proportions, and can have but one result, a collapse that will bring ruin to thousands of indiscreet purchasers. Our local real estate market is active, but as yet there is no unwholesome speculation in unimproved property. That may come further along. We still regard vacant lots in this city as a purchase. New York adds to its population over 50,000 every year, and this of itself creates a demand for new houses, which is steadily and rapidly diminishing the amount of available unim¬ proved land. There is at present taking piace additions to the currency of the country of a kind which is sure to advance values and stimulate retail traffic. Within the last five months some twenty-two million of notes—ones, twos and fives—have been issued. They have been greedily absorbed in the minor channels of trade, and the effect has been to create a buoyancy in all the industries of the country.' The government paper mill etill keeps at work, but the inflation is not dangerous, for the notes represent a silver dollar which is converti¬ ble into a gold dollar. There is some contraction due to the calling in of the government 3 per cents., and there is also some with¬ drawal of the standard silver dollars. But the banks are buying 4 arid 4:}4 per cents, to keep up tlieir issues, for it pays to emit bank currency when money commands from 5 to 7 per cent, in the open market. Thefse additions to the currency of the country are not in any way harmful, for they are based on the face value of gold and silver coin actually deposited in the Treasury. They help, how¬ ever, to advance prices and stimulate production as well as con¬ sumption. Bradsfreefs publishes some valuable statistics, going to show the improvement in the wages of the working people. It seems that in nearly every occupation, the leather business perhaps excepted, there has been an increase in the compensation not only of skilled but of unskilled working people. It is this fact which furnishes a basis for the improved business of the country. The wage receivers are the spending class; not one in a hundred of the laboring millions ever save any portion of their incomes. The aggregate expenditure from this source is enormous. If, for instance, there are $15,000,000 of working pieople whose average compensation has been increased $1.50 a week, it follows that $30,000,000 additional is now being poured into all the channels of retail trade. This increase, slight enough in each individual case, averages over $1,000,000,000 per annum. Hence, while it is the interest of individual employers to cut down and keep down wages, as a clags eiaploying capitalists are greatly benefited hj au advance The V/est Harlem Methodist Church. Another attempt at the chronic architectural problem of a Protestant church, that is to say of giving an ecclesiastical char¬ acter to the most convenient form of a lecture room, is making at the northwest corner of 130th street and 7th avenue. The archi¬ tect is Mr. Thomas, the same we believe who - has already made essays in the same direction in the white stone Baptist church in 57lh street, between 6th and 7th avenues, and in another cliurch of thesame material on the Boulevard. Both these edifices show interesting points of design or at least of planning, though neither is uniformly artistic in treatment. The building now under consideration has the advantage of a conspicuous site and of ample dimensions. It must extend 125 feeC along the street, including a chapel or Sunday school room at the west end, by 100 feet on the avenue, including the par.sonage at the north end. It is built of Croton brick, with copings, hoodmoulds and bands of light sandstone. Beginning at the west end on the street side, the Sunday school¬ room wliich takes up about 35 feefc of the frontage is in two stories, with a gable of moderate pitch. It is extremely plain in treatment and considered by itself shows nothing " architecturesque." The lower and subordinate story has four round arched openings grouped at the centre, the upper four larger openings of the same form, and there is a bull's-eye in the gable head. The arches and jambs are recessed with rectangular offsets, but neither stoue nor terra cotta is used, excepting a band of the former across fche gable, nor is there anything fco mark the springing of the arches. Tliis building is separated from the church, or united with it, as you please, by a tower-like strip of wall machicolated at the top, and without visible roof, unless ifc be intended to add a tower-like roof. The treatmentof ^-his piece of wall in the present case is very good. One tall and narrow opening at the centre, amounting to little more than a slit, serves to emphasize both the thickness and the expanse of the wall which it pierces, and above is a pair of small openings— all round arched, as indeed are the openings througliout. Next to this is the main gable of the " auditorium." This is a wide stretch of wall, covered with a gable of moderate pitch, not over forty-five degrees. Its principal feature, and, with its counterpart on the east side, the principal feature of the axchitecture, excepting the tower, is an arched opening of about 15 feet span and a little more than a semicircle in height. The arch itself is recessed with four offsets in brick work, its extrados marked by a hoodmould of stone, and is carried upon stoufc jamb-shafts of sfcone with low capitals carved in relief. The arch is filled with a wheel-window, of ^wooden tracery one regrets to observe, but the feature on the whole is effective and appropriate. This window opens upon the gallery of the auditorium, and below the arch and underneath the gallery is a simple arcade of five openings, with bases, hoodmoulds and springing course of stone. At the west end of this gabled wall is the principal entrance, a low round arch recessed as before. Over ifc is a round arched window, with a brick mullion and a stone transom, the head withdrawn some inches from the face of the wall shows a rudimentary tracery, the heads of the subordinate arches continuing the double window, and a bull'g-aye between and above them. At the east end the doorway adjoins the corner tower, and somewhat crowds the window of its lower stage. It is projected from the wall and has above its arch a low gablet with a stone coping. The avenue front repeats the streefc front, excepting that at the end the narrower parsonage takes the place of the Sunday school¬ room. This is simply treated, in congruity with the chxirch. At its base is an arched doorway, apparently serving for entrance both to the parsonage on one side and fco the subordinate rooms of tha church on the sther, and is rather awkwardly placed, crowding as it does the large single window which is the only opening in the first story of the dwelling. In the second story are a pair of seg- me;xt-beaded opeuiiags | in the third a group of three rounds