crown CU Home > Libraries Home
[x] Close window

Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Use your browser's Print function to print these pages.

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 44, no. 1133: November 30, 1889

Real Estate Record page image for page ldpd_7031148_004_00000705

Text version:

Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view About OCR text.
lite of the fact that the buildings are, aa a rule, higher and larger than those whicii occupied these sites prior tu our great fire. There are parts of our city which have not been thus improved, where the buildings are similar in many respects to those which seventeen years ago dissolved in a heap of ruins almost as soon as the great mass of flame struck them. But as fast as the requirements of trade or the results of age cause these old structures to be torn down and replaced by new ones, the effect of our build¬ ing laws comes into play, and the new edifices, if not fire-proof, are at least so far fire-resisting as to make their speedy destruction by an interior fire improbable, and their quick consumption by a sweep¬ ing conflagration impossible." A few hours later the fire-proof building owned by Jordan, Marsh & Co. was in flames, and Boston was struggling with a fire in tbe very section referred to, only less destructive than the great conflagration of 1873. The-flre-proof building is not likely to prove in esti-eme cases a more reliable structure in New York than it did in Massachusetts, This city is exposed to the danger of a conflagration quite as disas¬ trous and costly as the one that visited Boston on Thursday, and is not a whit better prepared to cope with it. Our fire department is perhaps the most efficient of our municipal organizations, but plainly its power needs augmenting in some way, if, despite all it could do, several miUion doUars worth of business buildings could be destroyed by fire. There are many persons, of course, who -will say no such conflagration could very well happen dotvn town in New York, but many people would have stoutly affirmed the same thing of Boston on Wednesday last, and on Thursday morning the Boston Herald actually did declare as much. The loss in Boston represents an investment in perpetuity of at least §300,000 per annum. An expenditure of half that sum to increase the effi¬ ciency and power of her fire department might have made it possible to confine the fire to the building in whicii it originated. New York should be provided witb a water system that wou'd ren¬ der fire engines unnecessary; there should be more hydrants than there are, and at least a certain numher of them should be equipped with hose ready for immediate use. The elevated roads, too, sbould be employed as an adjunct to the fire department for the transpor¬ tation of fire engines in case of a general call, so that they could be concentrated where needed in a much shorter time than is neces¬ sary at present. It should not be a diflScult matter to institute a system of rapid transportation for fire engines on the elevated roads. For a proper consideration the Man hattan Company would doubtless be wUling to provide at different points on its lines, and keep in readiness for use at any time, freight cars and the necessary appliances for hoisting and lowering tbs engines. Periodically tbe attention of the public is directed to the tene¬ ment question in New York by some book, or by some review or newspaper article, which bring to light once more the misery of the tenement house poor. Jacob I. Riis, in the December Scribner's, writes with the authority of an expert on the matter. The article is not indeed statistical, but simply an illustrative account of personal observations and experiences in the down-town tenement house district. It does not recommend any measures of relief, being indeed sceptical of the means that are being taken to cleanse and renovate the filthy places, and he is probably right. The Health Board of tbis city has done and is undoubtedly doing a valuable work. As Mr. Riis says: "It is no longer lawful to construct barracks to cover the whole of a lot. Air and sunlia-bt have a legal claim, and the day of the rear tenement ie past. Last year a hundred thousand people burrowed in these inhuman dens, but some bave been torn down since. Their number will decrease steadily, until they all bave become a bad " tradition of the heedless past." On tbe other hand, there are places above l4th street and even in Hai-lem whicb are as bad as the worst in the lower part of the city. The overcrowding stiU continues; and,