Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 40, no. 1014: August 20, 1887

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August 20, 1887 The Record and Guide. 1079 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. 191 Broadway, IST, "Y. Our Telephoue Call Is - - - - JOHN 370. TERMS: OIVE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY. BuBinesa Manager. Vol. XL. AUGUST 20. 1887. No. 1,014 The volume containing the new Building Law passed at the last .sessio7i of the Legislature, the Mechanics' Lien Law and the recent amendments thereto, the Law Limiting the Height of Divelling House.s, and the Tenement House Law, will be out by next Saturday. There has been an unexpected delay in the pithlieation on account of the very elaborate indexes which ivere necessary to make it as perfect as possible. The work is edited by Mr, William J. Fryer, Jr., whose notes will make it valuable to all interested in the build¬ ing trade. This volume will also contain a Directory of Architects in New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark and Yonkers The book is handsomely and strongly bound, and will be for sale at the office of The Record and Guide/or One Dollar. If the Tribune story of Friday is to be credited. Mackay and Flood are no longer bonanza millionai»-es. They made their money in mining and in manipulating the San Francisco mining share mar¬ ket, but they have lost the vast fortunes thus acquired in unprofit¬ able telegraphic construction, wheat deals and other outside enter¬ prises. They repeat the experiences of Senator John P. Jones aud other men who have suddenly acquired wealth. Jones is really a very bright man in many ways. He made an immense fortune while superintendent of the Crown Point mine in the Comstock Lode. Whereupon he entered upon a number of outside business enter¬ prises, every one of which was unfortunate, and in the end he became substantially a bankrupt. Flood. Mackay, Fair and O'Brien were originally retail liquor dealers in Virginia City. They got into the bonanza mines at very cheap pricea and made enormous fortunes. O'Brien died rich. Fair remains rich, but it now looks as if Mackay and Flood would be left with only moderate fortunes. Jay Gould has recently sold $17,000,000 bonds of the Missouri Pacific system. It is understood that the bulk of these holdings were his own. There is much curiosity to know what he wants to do with all this ready money. Can it be that he will turn up as the owner of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad and telegraph sys¬ tems ? This would give him a continuous line from the City of Mexico to Philadelphia. It will be remembered that Gould quar¬ reled with the elder Garrett because the latter would not unite with him in a great railroad deal. He was known to be very anx¬ ious to have a share when Alfred Sully secured the option on the B. & O. road. Certainly this vast sum of ready money is destined for some new investment to add to the possessions of the newly- made grandpapa. ----------»--------- The administration has done a deservedly popular act in throw¬ ing open a hundred million acres of land for settlement, which the railroad corporations had somehow persuaded the officials of the Interior Department to tie up for their benefit. The land gi*ant railroad companies can, however, fairly claim that the government policy in the past has been a bad thing neither for the country nor for the Western settlements. There are probably three miles of railroad we-^t of the Mississippi to-day where there would not have been more than one if the government had not donated lands for their construction. Then the policy of all the roads has been to discourage land monopoly. They have striven, and in most cases successfully, to induce settlers to buy farms near the line of their roads. They have discriminated against persons who wished to purchase tracts of land for speculation. The more agriculturists and traders that settle in their vicinity the better it is for the new com¬ panies. Still the latter undoubtedly bribed the Washington officials to tie up lands to which they had no claim, in order that when they built their roads they could pick the choicest sections for re-sale. This uew land policy of the government, together with the practical opening of the Indian territory, will add to the emigration from the East to the Northwest, West and Southwest. This movement of population will benefit all the Western roads. books and apparatus. It is discreditable to us as a nation that we should tax either knowledge, science or art. Yet our impost duties put heavy burdens upon statuary and painting of foreign origin, while scientific books and apparatus are burdened by our laws. What makes our position particularly absurd is that we impose a heavy tax on the community to circulate dime novels and other wordy trash. As we have often explained, the people of the United States give a heavy bonus to newspapers by circulating them in bulk for a tithe of their actual cost to the Treasury. By a special act of Congress the cheap novels of the day are classed with newspapers, and as a consequence Mr. George Munro and the swarm of pirates who republish both foreign and domestic works without giving the authors any compensation have their wares carried through the mails at a heavy expense to the Treasury. Nothing is said about this abuse in the newspapers, for they are practicaUy in league with these people in robbing the Treasury. The scientists who met in New York last wttk are quite right in 3«ina£idiii^ tbtit Cocgre^e «hculd redtice the tariff o& scientific The Hudson River Branch Y. M. C. A. This may not be the proper style and title of the building which those of the men employed upon the Central-Hudson system who are stationed in New York, or who regularly visit it, owe to the munificence of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt. At any rate it expresses well enough the purpose of the building, which is that of a club where physical exercise and social enjoyment may be had under wholesome moral conditions. The new building, now nearly complete, of which Mr. R. H. Robertson is the architect, measures not far from 75 feet by 45. The principal building, at the corner of Madison avenuo and Forty- sixth street, of about 30 feet on the avenue by 45 on the street, is of three stories and a steep hipped roof with dormer windows over a basement 6 feet high. An extension about 45 feet long on Mad¬ ison avenue is in two stories. The basement is of Scotch sandstone, the superstructure of red brick, red terra cotta and tawny brown brick, and the roof is covered with brown corrugated tiles with hip rolls of the same material. The main entrance is at the north end of the main building on Madison avenue (the site is the northeast corner). This entrance is a broad round arch with a low triangular pediment, carried by a sheaf of columns in either jamb, or rather by a reeded pier, with a contmuous capital—all in terra cotta. Abreast of this is a large window—another arch of similar form and treatment, though of course without the pediment. The wall up to the sill course of the windows is of red brick and the jambs of the windows for the width of the arch are of the same material, in which also the corners are quoined, though left flush with the filling, wliich is of the tawny long and narrow Roman bricks that have been made familiar in so many buildings of late, and notably in the Tiffany house. The second story has two double windows with flat arches in red brick, the outline defined by a light moulding. The third is an arcade of five round-arched openings, the arches and jambs in red brick in a field of the tawny brick framed by the quoining at the angles and by a heavy and plain arched cornice in red terra cotta. Above this cornice is a low parapet of the same material, broken at the centre by a large gabled dormer of three openings framed in terra cotta between brick piers. The sides are hung with red tiles and the gable is pierced by a bull's-eye. In the street front the first story has a pair of round arches, the heads, over stone transoms, filled with brick, with a grotesque Renaissance mask in terra cotta at the centre of each. In the second story there is one opening similar to those of the same story in the front, with a bull's-eye adjoining. The third story is an arcade, repeating that of the main front, and of the same num¬ ber of openings, but with an ampler space of wall on either side, by reason of the greater length of this front. Below, this front is much less symmetrical than the other by reason of the introduction of the staircase at its eastern end. In addition to the openings, already described, which occupy the western half of the front there is at the eastern end a little arcade of three openings, the springing line of which is the sill course of the first story windows, and which evidently lights the basement flight of the staircase. Above is a large round-arched window, the sill of which is level with the transoms of the first story windows. A belt of red brick continues around the whole building the line of the flat arches of the second story. The dormer on this side does not stand upon the wall like that in the main front, but is a semi-circular opening under a gable halfway up the roof. The extension on Madison avenue has in the first story three segmental arches turned between ornate springers in terra cotta, with a decorated frame between the northern two which is appar¬ ently meant to receive an inscribed tablet. The upper wall is recessed a few inches, though the plane of the lower is prolonged in the terminal pier, a moulded string course iu terra cotta mask¬ ing the oflfeet. The second story is an arcade of seven tall round- headed openings in red brick, with its tawny background framed like a panel between the projections of the terminal pier and of the main building at the sides, the moulded offset below and the QotnicQ above, of which th« upper member ifl t^6 ^)J't)lDttgatIott oi