Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 40, no. 1016: September 3, 1887

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112i The Record and Guide. September 3, 1887 parks in the annexed district—they do not at present need any costly manipulation. They will be recreation grounds for years to come that will not involve large expenditure. Indeed, the present generation of editors and landscape gardeners will have passed away before any money will be needed to improve the recreative resorts north of the Harlem. No. 27 Lafavette Place. A variation upon the common run of our street architecture, if our street architecture can at present be said to have any common run, has just beeu executed at the place noted above, in a front of some architectural pretension and interest. It is the work, we believe, of Messrs. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, aa might per¬ haps be inferred from its appearance by those who are familiar with the buildings recently erected for Grace Church, and, aa might also be surmised by such persons, it is one of the monuments of the late Miss Wolfe's munificence, being intended, it is understood, as the Episcopal residence of the diocese of New York. Perhaps it is to its destination as a bishop's palace that some of the palatial features in its architecture are due. There is no doubt about there having been a common run of NewYork architecture at the time when Lafayette place was built up. Until within a few years the residences of that no-thoroughfare were very typical of the archi¬ tectural notions that prevailed among our respected parents. The Astor Library was a new departure, being about the first specimen seen here of the revival of Romanesque architecture,' after the example of Gartner in Munich. The Library looks tame enough now, and indeed was at all times a demure and well-behaved edifice, though ita modelling and detail were unfamiliar when they were erected in a city that haa now many better examples of German Romanesque. The common run is exhibited in such of the solid old dwellings aa are still left, with their aspect of perfectly unpreten¬ tious comfort and their sparing classic ornament carefully detailed. The more aspiring efforts ot the same period are shown in the Colonnade, whose long rows of Corinthian columns are undeniably impressive, and give the front a harmony and elegance that we miss in later attempts to treat uniformly a long row of dwell¬ ing houses. Of course the architecture has as little as possible to do with the houses, and their windows are mere impertinences in the composition. It is not at all what our designers have to do, but it is what they have not to do very well done, and so not without its usefulness. Of later innovations in the street the big, bald brick printing house of De Vinne, affectedly bald and quaint, and not successful as a harmonious composition, is the only one that deserves notice. The new building is a piece of pronounced Gothic, and the domestic Gothic of the Middle Ages, the revival of which is well within the memories of the middle-aged, already begins to look a little bygone and old-fashioned, thanks to Queen Anne and other domesticities, the day of which has been even briefer. But then a style in which generations of artists have worked, and in which great things have been done, can never become so obsolete as a style in which nobody in particular has worked and nothing in particular has been done. This house, moreover, reproduces the impression of that Venetian Gothic which Mr. Ruskin used to laud so eloquently before he took to scolding less eloquently the makers of all other architecture. It is a mere front, and not a wide front, like many of the best of the Venetian palaces. This is 40 feet wide and in four stories, over a rather high basement, with no visible roof. The basement and first story are of Westchester marble, the upper three stories of cream-colored brick, relieved by a darker brownish brick at the angles and in the arches, and by a brown sandstone, or possibly terra cotta, in the labels and tympana of the arches, in the main cornice, and in a string course under the fourth story. Tbe " high stoop" ia dissembled by an approach through two flights of a broad marble staircase, witb a broad landing at the turn. The main feature is a rather shallow bay window, about a third the width of the front, running through the first and second stories, of marble in the first and brickwork in the second, and carried upon three stout corbels projected from the basement wall, and connected by segmental arches that are hooded over the base¬ ment windows. In the first story this bay wiudow has a group of three pointed arches, sprung from square piers at the aides and columns in the centre, the shafts of polished granite with marble capi¬ tals and bases. Their heads are filled with tracery, not ramifying from mullions but resting on Ught transoms, and framing stained glass. The mam doorway and a window alongside of it are similarly treated—that is, with tracery over the transoms filled with stained glass, although in these the hood moulding is carried out in a Gothic finial. It is the arcade and this arrangement of tracery that gives the front its Venetian aspect, for the detail is not at all Italian in character, rather French. The tracery is not bad in itself, but this arrangement of tracery, unless it be a mere perfora¬ tion of a solid screen in the window head, always has an awkward and interrupted look. The tracery that fills the area railing and the railing of a balcony projected over the first story as far as the projection of the bay window is much better, being a flamboyant distortion of foiling, and accommodating itself much more grace¬ fully to the slope of the stairs than either a colonnade or an arcade would have done. In the supports of the balcony, which is an effective feature, the style is abandoned altogether, for the balcony rests upon consoles that are distinctly of the Renaissance in form and detail. The moat vigorous and expressive piece of work in all this marble substructure is the corbelling of the bay window, which is extremely straightforward and satisfactory. On the whole the substructure is better than the brickwork above. The second story haa four rectangular windows, with seg¬ mental arches over them, in brick with stone labels, and the heads are filled with panels apparently of terra cotta. The third story has four openings aligned over these, but these are rather steep pointed arches, though the windows themselves are again rectan¬ gular and the heads are filled as before. Above this story runs a moulded aud enriched string course dividing the front into three main parts—the marble basement, the two intermediate stories and the upper story. This upper story is a series of pairs of small arched openings, four in all, each aligned over one of the large windows below. Each pair is divided by a granite shaft at the centre, from which are turned the low arches, not segmental but two-centred. Over this is a rather heavy and not very successful cornice of mixed classic and Gothic, that would have been improved by the omission of its frieze, decorated with uninteresting and con¬ ventional Gothic gablets. This is emphatically one of the works of art to which we may apply the Vicar of Wakefield's safe criticism, that it would have been better if the artist had taken more pains. The combination of material is not so successful as it is novel. White marble cannot be safely used as the basement to a darker superstructure. As it is used here it aggravates the chief fault of the design, that it is lightest and richest at the bottom and heaviest and solidest at the top. A basement of sandstone, of the same color as that used above, or perhaps still better of Caen stone, would have made a more harmonious effect. If with such a choice of material the architect had carried out the Venetian suggestion of his front by reducing the apparent height of his third story, and developing the fourth into one of those arcades with traceried spandrils that are among the most charming features of the Venetian palaces, he would have produced a street front as picturesque and elegant as it is striking. We feel ungrateful for quarrelling with him about what he has done, seeing it is so agreeable a variation from most of the new work in domestic architecture. But, then, it might so easily have been made so much better. Real Estate Business for Eight Months Past. Last week we pointed out the heavy increase in real estate trans¬ actions and new buildings for the past year and seven months compared with previous years. This week we give the figures for the month of August, just past, which shows a falling off compared with the August of last year, although the eight montha of 1887 are considerably ahead of the corresponding months of 1886. There is evidently no unwholesome *'boom" in real efc tate in New York and vicinity as yet. It may come, for the land buying mania is spreading all over the country, though as yet it has not made its appearance in any exaggerated way east of the AUeghanies. One unfavorable sign is the increase of mortgage indebtedness. There were fewer transactions in real estate in August, 1887, com¬ pared with August, 1886, but there were more mortgages in the former year than in the latter, and the aggregate indebtedness was greater. There were only 230 projected new buildings during the past month, against 298 during the August of last year. There was a falling off, comparing the same two months, of over $900,000 in the proposed expenditure for new structures. The principal decrease is on the east side and the central portions of the city. The west side and the annexed district seems to be gaining. Of course it should be borne in mind that many of the new buildings which are projected will never be commenced, nor will there be the money outlay that figures in the plans. Builders who construct to sell are apt to over-estimate the sums required to carry their projects through. But here are the figures for August, also for the first eight months of this year. They should be carefully analyzed by every one interested in real estate: CONVByANCKa. 1887. Conveys. Jan.-July inc.. 9,■^31 August....... 699 Amount. $179,629,103 12,764.971 Nom. 1,637 134 1,771 23d & 24th W. Amount. 1,588 $7,338,654 163 715,164 1,741 $8,053,818 Nom 275 16 Total...... 10,030 $192,394,074 293 1886. Jan.-July,inc. S,7e3 August....... 712 $162,243,653 11,494,678 1,486 118 1,152 129 $4,495,295 383,252 180 18 Total...... 9,495 $173,737,330 1,604 1,281 $4,878,547 198 1885. Jan.-July, inc, 7.045 August........ 600 $117,375,802 8,464,205 $135,840,007 1,559 138 1.697 872 110 983 $2,502,636 247,631) 207 81 Total...... 7,645 $2,840,2ti6 SS8