Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 39, no. 1006: June 25, 1887

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June 35, 1887 rhe Record and Guide, 363 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. 191 Broad^Aray, IST. IT. Our Teleplioue CaU is.....JOHN 370. TERMS: ONE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. as if a larger business will be done in conveyancing real estate, especially unimproved property. Vol. XXXIX. JUNE 35, 1887. No. 1,006 The panic in the stock market yesterday was due to the manip¬ ulation of Jay Gould. He called his loans in early in the day and marked down the price of his specialties; that is, Manhattan, Missouri Pacific and Western Union. This knocked the whole market. It is surmised his object was to break Ives and Stysor so as to capture the Baltimore & Ohio system, telegraph and all. After this raid speculation will be very dull in the " street." Jay Gould has been reported dying ; the occurrences of yesterday will make a great many people sorry that the rumor was not true. Stocks have been panicy during the past week in Wall street, due to the discovery of rottenness in fioancial institutions which were supposed to be above suspicion. All the obvious factors favor an advance in prices, for the railroad companies were never doing a more profltable business. But the dullness in stock circles is attributed to other and more general causes. The half holiday law nominally takes twenty-six working days out of the year, but really injures business to an extent that means a loss of fully forty days in the year. Then the recent law of Congress, making Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and other Western centres reserve cities for bank¬ ing operations is seriously affecting the supply of money at this flnancial centre. Under the old law as to reserves the banks every¬ where kept a deposit in New York, but under the new state of things the New York banks are tempted to keep deposits in Chicago and other banks, where the rate of interest is materially higher ; hence the small surplus of funds in the New York associated banks and the consequent damper upon speculation in securities. These considerations suggest the proposed Arcade road under Broadway. We have always believed that this was the best possible plan for giving us real rapid transit and reducing the number of vehicles on our great thoroughfare. The projectors of the Arcade system have shown singular ability in the preliminary work of securing the charter and getting the co-operation of legislatures and executives, but we have always considered it an open question whether they could raise the money to complete this great enter¬ prise. The attempt is now to be made. A committee, headed by ex-Secretary of the Treasury William Windom, is out with a plan for constructing the first section of a four-track road six miles in length, running from the Battery under Broadway to Fifty-ninth street, with a branch from Madison avenue to the Grand Central Depot. To construct this work 400,000 shares of stock are to be issued at the par value of $100 per share, together with $6,000,000 of bonds at 65 cents on the dollar. No money is to be paid until the bonds and stock are all subscribed for. It is proposed to complete the entire six miles within two years. The response to this call will tell the story of the future of the Broadway Acade road. ----------»---------- Chicago aspires to be the third city in the Union in population. It is now about 63,000 behind Brooklyn, which at the last census had 566,653 inhabitants. To help Chicago the Illinois Legislature has made it easy for large cities in that State to annex their popu¬ lous suburbs. It is now proposed to take in' the town of Lake, most of Lake View and a large part of Hyde Park. By 1890, at the present rate of progress, these townships should contain about 125,000 people. This would, of course, give Chicago a start ahead of Brooklyn. If it were only possible for New York city to absorb its suburbs it would soon become the third city in the world in population. It is claimed that since the world began there was never so large a crowd as that which occupied the six miles of " ahoutirg streets" from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey on the celebration of the Queen's Jubilee last Tuesday. On that occasion the crowd was so well handled that no one was injured. Those who plan modern cities would do well to keep in mind the possibility of vast crowds assembling. The McGlynn parade last Saturday night was in appearance a monster affair. Yet an actual count of those in the procession showed it to be composed of less than 13,000 persons. Of course this does not include the sympathizing throng of lookers- on on the sidewalk. Heneo it does not require such very large crowds to uncomfortably fill even the broadest streets in any of the principal cities of the world. London, it seems, has about doubled its population since Queen Victoria was crowned. The ratio of increase is about as great in New York as it is in London, taking into recount, of course, the populations around the shores of New York Bay, which should be considered a part of the metropolis. We will have our processions and pageants twenty-five and fifty years from now, and we should provide open spaces for the accommodation of citizens and strangers on occasions of great popular festivities. Unfortunately those who plan our streets have not as much " foresight as hindsight," and it will be found a half century hence that our streets are too narrow for the crowds that will occupy and the business that is to be trans¬ acted in them. Indeed the time has already come when something will have to be done to relieve the streets below the City Hall Park of the excess of vehicles and the sidewalks of the throngs which now pour out from the tall office buildings. It is worthy of note, anent the real estate situation, that while the number of transfers is largely in excess of what it was at this time last year, the filing of plans for new buildings is somewhat slack just now. Of course, the principal activity in the architects' offices is during the early spring. Summer is the time in which building plans are being executed, not when they are projected. Then an amended " Building law " has been enacted, and builders • are timid about entering into new enterprises until they thoroughly understand the provisions of the law. There is no evidence that there will be any falling off in the building movement of the next six months compared with the past five months; but it does seem The Nation's Yearly Building Bill. There is a class of statisticians who delight in taking one's breath away with huge calculations. From time to time these individuals make their appearance with computations as to how many pounds of bread and meat or how many gallons of beer and wine are con¬ sumed by the nation annually. The digestion of the ordinary mortal grows faint at the contemplation of such enormities, which are made doubly vivid by means of examples. We are told, for instance, that if the loaves of bread consumed annually were strung together they might serve as a visible tail to the planet Jupiter; and that the cattle we eat, if placed in a file within hearing of one another, might bellow round the world. But no one has yet computed for us how much the nation spends annually in new building. What does our yearly building bill amount to? In the number of The Eecord and Guide that appeared on Feb¬ ruary 38th, 1885, figures were given showing the value of the new buildings erected during the previous year in twenty-one of the ]>rincipal cities of the United States. The intention was to give a more extended report, but the figures were all that could be obtained from both official reports and inquiries among Mayors and municipal officers. Though the result, as bearing upon the amount of building done in the country at large, was unsatisfactory, it brought to light the important fact that outside of the very largest centres of population no building statistics are kept, nor is there any official supervision of edifices constructed. Indeed, it showed that nine out of every ten houses in this country are erected without any responsibility apart from that belonging to the builders or the persons for whom the new structures are erected. Bradstreefs reported last week that in the following places either no records are kept, or if kept are not avail¬ able: Allegheny, Pa., Helena, Hon., Racine, Wis., Ashland, Wis., Jacksonville, Pia., Reading, Pa., Bennington, Vt., Kalamazoo, Mich., Richmond, Va., Boston, Mass., Key West, Fla., Savannah, Ga., Buffalo, N. Y,, Knoxville, Tenn., Scranton, Pa., Caiio, 111., Leadville, Col., South Bend, Ind., Des Moines, Iowa, Mobile, Ala., Springfield, Mass. Elmira, N. Y., Newark, N. J., Syracuse, N. Y., . Fergus Falls, Minn., Norfolk, Va., Tampa, Fla., Fond du Lac, Wis., Pittsburgh, Pa,, Trenton, N. J., Tort Smith, Ark., Portland, Me., Utica, N. Y., Frankfort, Ky., Portsmouth, N. H., Wheeling, W. V,, Grand Rapids, Mich., Pi'ovidence, R. I.. This absence of official supervision probably does not matter much on farnis, or in villages and in small towns. The projector of the new home or store knows what he wants and keeps an eye on the builder. But in larger towns and in cities the Buddensiecks make their appearance. What is everybody's business is nobody's business, and so in cities some sort of official supervision is abso¬ lutely necessary to protect the community. But, apart from this important side of the matter, it is desirable to