Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

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June 4, 1887 The Record and Guide. 767 according to the decision of the Court of Appeals, deUvered on the SOth of AprU, 1886, were practicaUy no evidence at all, for, as that tribunal held, "a debt once paid has no existence, and it is impossible that taxation should be resorted to in order to meet a fanciful objection, or one lohieh hy re deimption is in the hands of the debtor." Now as the amount of bonds in the sinking fund at the close of 1886 was $38,294,958.10, the actual debt of the city was $93,306,145.47, which shows a reduction of $763,479.53 on the debt statement of 1885, and not an increase of over two millions. In the meantime the resources of the city, as indicated by the receipts of the sinking fund, steadily increased. In 1880 they amounted to $4,951,- 237.04, and in 1886 to $8,727,435.47, an increase at the rate of $629,366 a year ; so that the total amount from and including 1880 to and including 1886, a period of seven years, reached the aggregate of $48,593,241.60, or more than one-half the true debt, and sufficient to pay for the parks flve times over. The last tax estimate values the total assessible real estate at $1,203,- 941,065, and as the city, under the constitutional amendment, can issue bonds to the amount of 10 per cent, of this sum, its debt is at present $27,087,961 below the limit; so that this amount is all avaUable for public improvements if required. The future, of course, is provided for from the same sources, and if the sinking fund should grow with the years, in five years more its accumulating revenues toill reach the handsome total of $53,077,625. And as the fund increases the ascending scale of real estate values will by 1893, in all probability, have reached the grand aggregate of $1,400,000,000, or probably nearer $1,450,000,000. It is evident from this estimate that there will be within the time speci¬ fied—by the year 1892—ample means, not only to pay for the land within the parks, even if the law did not provide for its purchase by the issue of bonds, but sufficient for the construction of the new Croton aqueduct and dam, for new school houses, new docks and other public improvements. AU these could be done with the $53^077,625 which will be paid into the sinking fund from the increasing income of the next five years, and with¬ out the addition of a single dollar to the yearly tax budget. Nor is this an overestimate, if we take into account the marvelous growth of our population, which to all appearances is increasing at the rate of 6 per cent, a year, as in the decades from 1800 to 1810, from 1820 to 1830, from 1840 to 1850, and from 1850 to 1860. Should the present accel¬ erated speed continue till 1890, we shaU have in that year over 1,900,000 inhabitants in New York, and this rate of increase gives us at present a population of at least 1,700,000. By the close of the century there wUJ, if this progress is maintained, be 3,000,000 souls within our city limits. tWho can then say that we exceeded the bounds when we insisted at the commencement of the park movement in 1881 in appropriating not only the large tracts within the city limits, but the park by the Sound ? Had we laid out 6,000 acres instead of 3,800, the area would stiU be inadequate before the end of the present century. Calling the attention of the public nearly six years ago to the necessity of making ample provision in advance by taking the most desirable and suitable sites for parks, I referred to this marvelous growth of our population, and said that this country must exercise a vast, a controlling influence on the civUization, the policy, the commerce of the world, and the great metropolis, the commercial capital of the nation, must be the financial centre around which the business interests of the whole continent shall revolve; that London wUl no longer hold the balance of power in the monetary world, aud Lombard street and the Bourse wiU be governed in then- movements by the Wall street barometer. The New York of the future vrill be not only to the New, but to the Old World as well, what London and Paris are to Europe—tbe great centi'e of capital, commerce and enterpi'iae, the ai'biter of taste and fashion, the magnet to attract travelers from the ends of the earth. Here the wealth of a continent will find profitable fields for investment; here art and genius will discover new forms of expression; here invention will Ughten labor, and liberty wUl dignify toil; here, too, wealth wUl find its noblest work in erecting homes and asylums for those who have been wounded in the battle of life, and its most graceful use in founding institutions wherein might be stored the products of the brain power of the world, whether in printed volumes or Uluminated manuscripts, in speaking, canvas or in sciUptured marble; such institutions as the Astor and Lenox librari^, Cooper Insti¬ tute and the Museum of Art. Standing midway in the paths of commerce and trade between Europe and Asia, between the active civilization of the one and the long dormant but awakening civiUzation of the other, the most vivid imagination might weU shrink from foreshadowing the future of om- imperial city. Nothing can impede or delay its progress but the apathy or indifference of its citizens; nothing impart to it such an impetus as their active interest in every project designed to extend its boundaries and increase its attractive¬ ness. Apprehensions of the decline of trade or the loss of this or that branch of business from competition with rival cities may alarm timid minds, but the true poUcy is to make our metropolis so inviting that it will bring not only pleasure seekers but profit seekers to enjoy its advantages and participate in its pleasures. The New York for which we are now to provide is a city whose population wUl, within the present century, surge in great waves up to the northern and eastern boundary lines aad into Westchester county. In the next quarter of a century the new parks wiU be as inadequate to the demands of the future as the Central Park is to meet the requii-ements of fche present. John Mxillaly. Concerning Men and Things. *** Architects in every part of the city report that at no time in the past three years have they had so little work on their-boards as at present. A prominent architect said, in conversation with a representative of Thb Record and Guide: "Everything has suddenly fallen flat, and the amount of new work is smaller than I have everknovm it to be. In a great many oases operations have been postponed untU the fall, and builders are putting a stop to all but absolutely necessary work. Why is this f Well, I can't say, unless it is that people are afraid that too much has been done of late. Business men in New York are becoming more conservative than they used to be, and are sensitive to probable danger. No, I don't say that there is danger, but no one can doubt that a great deal of building has been doue in this city, and indeed all over the country, d^u•ing the past twelve mouths. I don't look for any improvement untU the faU. TJntU then I certainly expect quiet times. * ' * While they do not seem able to get up a boom on Wail street in stock the past season has been signalized by the working off of a number of special¬ ties. Phenix Mining stock, now rarely dealt in, about $1.50 a share was worked up to $14 and over. Fort Worth & Denver Railroad stock was put up 26 points. Erie & Western Preferred started at 35 and sold as high as 61. Hocking Coal and Iron sold up from 35 to 50. Wheeling & Buffalo has been "whooped up" during the past week. Kingston & PembrookiCoal and Iron, the subscription price of which was $3 was engineered up to $6 when put on the board. This is a Cana¬ dian property, and it seems absurd to deal in it in view of the quantity of coal and iron we have in our own countiy. All who paid the highest figures for the above-named propertieshave probably made a permanent investment. * ** The World, which shows enterprise in^ many directions, is not above renewing old sensations. It is about to have a baUoon excursion, which will be the talk of the country. This idea is an imitation of the famous Graphic balloon, with which it was proposed to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but which landed in Connecticut after a flight of less than three hours in the air. In Manton Marble's time tho World made a hit by testing the weights in the leading grocery stores of the city, to see if they agreed vrith the official scales. It was found that the majority of our first-class grocers gave Ught weight. The World at that time also investigated the purity of the goods sold by the grocers and liquor dealers. The story of adiUtera- tions was an extraordinary one, and attracted unwonted attention through¬ out the country. The attack was a courageous one, because it incriminated the leading grocery stores and restaurants of New York city. Some of the most pretentious bar-rooms were found to be selling whiskey containiug large quantities of f usU oil. Mr. Pulitzer's World is now engaged in the same fleld, but, if we are rightly informed, wiU conflne its exposures to the cheaper concerns throughout the city—those patronixed by our tene¬ ment population. Undoubtedly, some good vriU be done in exposing con¬ cerns which give light weight and sell adulterated groceries and poisonous whiskey. *** The case of the Uttle boy in Williamsburg, whose arm is swoUen to twice its natural size, and who wiU probably die a terrible death in consequence of vaccination with impm*e matter, shows that the fear which many people have of this sort of inoculation is far from being without foundation. Though the case is an extreme one, there is reason to think that great harm is often done in this way, and the parents of another little boy, who are well-to-do and intelligent people, declared that they would rather that their child would have had the small-pox than that he should have suffered as he did from fever and sores after vaccination. There are very good excuses for those people among the "unthinking masses" who object to being vaccinated and to whom it seems an outrage when it ia made compulsory, and in this as weU as in some other matters their untutored sense is worth as much as the wisdom of the scientific Scribes and Pharisees on whom the educated people of our day pin their faith in too unquestioning a spirit. The management of the " vaccine farm" and the whole process of the prep¬ aration and sale of vaccine virus is eminently a matter that ought to be under the strict supervision and control of the State, and no physician should be allowed to take virus from the arm of one patient and communi¬ cate it, with what diseases added he does not know, to the system of another. Owners of property west of the Park are beginning to feel the inade¬ quacy of the present station accommodation on the Elevated R. R. There are at present altogether too few stations for the long stretch of road north of 59th street, and this is felt by residents and others especiaUy in very hot weather or on rainy days. A station at every tenth street may have been even more than sufficient for the population on the west side foin* or five years ago, but this is far from being the case to-day. What the Sixth avenue line is doing for the lower part of the city needs to be carried northward. It would undoubtedly benefit west side property. The story that a syndicate of capitalists, including Messrs. Nunnemacher, Day and Freeman, have decided to erect a theatre on the corner of 43d street and 7th avenue, is a little premature. The matter, at present, has scarcely taken any definite shape, though such a buUding is being talked of. Be¬ fore the project can be carried through several difficulties must be disposed of. Possibly the most important is to induce the present lessees of the property needed to accept the bonus of $10,000 offered by the syndicate, so that the Livingston can grant a lease for twenty-one yeai-s after the expira¬ tion of the one now running. If this cannot be done the syndicate m^ mt likely to build; atleastnot oa th© spot now eonten^latedi. A correspondent asks why it is that other cities, such as PhUadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis have higher numbers in their streets and avenues than New York. One reason is that New York is buUt in a narrower and more restricted space than those cities, and has fewer long streets, with buUdings separated by vacant lots. Then, in PhUadelphia, a system such as we apply only to the short, crosstown streets, by which one hundred numbers are set apart for every block, though it may be not more than fifty of them are used, is appUed to the long streets and avenues as weU as the short ones, so that the highest numbers used are large on account of the omission or non-use of so many of the lower ones. Bric-a,-brac cabinets with onyx top and shelves iwad brass fr^me art i»p»0Qgtbe^eg{mt mi §xpe2tidY§ ^^oveltieij