Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 46, no. 1183: November 15, 1890

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November 15,1890 Record and Guide. 645 DEvbid) TO RN- Estate . BuiLwrfc AjMrrEcroi^ .Household Deooi^tioiI. Bi/5i»(ESS Alto Themes of GiftEnfiV I^tc^est PRICE, PER TEAR IN ADYANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Publish^ every Saturday. TKIiEPHONE, . . • CJORTLANDT 1870, Coinmunications should be addressed to C.W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Busineas Manager. Vol. XLVI, NOVEMBER 15, 1890. No. 1,183 WALL STREET is trying to recover from the eflFects of one of these panics which recur at varying intervals but with unvaryiug certainty. The crisis cannot be said to have brought to light rotten spots of any importance in our own financial condition. The one bank wbich failed has apparently been mismanaged, but large private firms which went under had been weakened by the tightness of money, which embarrassed them as large borrowers whose collateral was none of the best. Credit, however, was shown to be in a sound condition, and the prompt relief afforded by the action of the Clearing House Association restored confidence immediately. The strained condition of the money market has been the principal source of weakness in our business situation. It was for this reason that the advance in the Bank of England's rate of discount affected us so unfavorably. Our country has been engaged in the process of locking up its circulating capital in fixed improvements. Building has been very active, using large amounts of capital. The enormous consumption of iron also shows to what extent our available resources were being rendered inac¬ cessible for quick returns or prompt concentration. Concomitant with this, England began to sell u» our securities whenever the market would take them. That country had lost so much money in South America tbat English investors were obliged to realize on their securities in order to strengthen their position. Prices cannot recover at this moment, because selling orders are jioured into our market from abroad immediately they begin to show any strength. The precarious nature of English finances is best shown by the fact that the Bank of England has been obliged to borrow £3,000,000 from the Bank of France to tide over the crisis—a fact, we believe, unparalleled in financial history. It is thus that England is gather¬ ing the fruits f.«f her monometallic policy, which deprives her busi¬ ness of the use of one of the metals. . In the emergency her finan¬ ciers are obliged to appeal to bimetallic France, whose immense stores of both gold and silver give her a strength which the finances of England lack. The London market continues to be the chief menace to our own. The determined efforts being made to restore rates to a paying basis have better prospects of accom¬ plishing something in the near future than at any time for some years past. So many prominent capitalists are earnestly working for a solution, that some more binding agreement than the last will probably be formulated. Everything, however, will be uncer¬ tain until tbere is a better assurance of an easy money market in London. Probably the legitimate manufacturing interests of this country were never in a better shape to resist a Wall street trouble than at present. Usually stock panics find business men in a pre¬ carious position; but now, instead of merchants being loaded up with big stocks of goods at falling prices, the contrary is the case. If trouble comes, it will be largely confined to speculators, and wiU not disturb, except sympathetically, legitimate business. The rumors affecting the names of English banking firms known throughout the world when gray-haired men were babies shows tbat London is not yet in smooth water, and no man can be too careful of future engagements. One cannot paddle too cloee to shore in times like these. THE Manhattan Elevated Railroad Company held its annual meeting on Monday last. The stockholders have every reason to feel satisfied with the report submitted. A surplus was earned almost equal to the company's accumulated surplus hith¬ erto; the gross .earnings have increased over $400,000, and the operating expenses reduced nearly $300,000. During the year 188,- 303,877 passengers were carried ; an increase of something more than 4 per cent over 1889. The report also contains a grain of comfort for the patrons of the road. The meeting was private; but the secretary stated to the reporters that the directcHB had decided to make extensive improvemeBtB throughout the coming year. No details as to what these improvements would oOBSiBt of were divulged, ezc^ that $600,000 worth o/l new cars had ali^eady been ordered to relieve the overcrowded condition of the traffic. A comparison of the various reports of the Manhattan Company presents some interesting features. The increase of over 4 per cent in the passengers carried during the period covered by the report of 1890 over the period covered by the report of 18l;9, is slightly larger than the increase in 1889 over \%t^, but is smaller than the increase in any other previous year except 1884. Exclud¬ ing the enormous augmentation which took place in 1887 of 37 per cent, due to the establishment of a uniform flve cent fare, and that of some of the earlier years of the company's existence, the normal rate of increase would appear to be between 6 and 7 per cent. Any such estimate is, to a certain extent, misleading. For many years the trains have been so overcrowded during certain hours as to offer an impediment to what would be the maximun increase, but even at this low calculation the company is losing the fares of three or four million passengers a year, and property-owners are losing the benefit that would accrue from better communica¬ tion. This fact need hardly be emphasized, but we may well stop to consider whether, in view of the fact that some years have still to elapse before any commission can develop a plan and any coriioration carry it out, the Manhattan Company might not be aided in providing the stop-gap required. We do not know exactly what resources the company still has at its command. Its service is being increased just so as to accommodate the increased traffic, but without any attempt to ameliorate the present over¬ crowding. Doubtless its managers will be able to continue this moderate increase of service for some years yet, to the continued discomfort of its patrons. But when will their utmost limit be reached V The caution with which the service is kept just at a bearable point is an indication that the management have reason to husband their resources. The cable roads on Broadway and 3d avenue, soon to be constructed, will give some alleviation by tak¬ ing from the elevated roads a larger proportion of the short-dis¬ tance fares; but at the crowded periods of the day nearly all tlft> passengers make too long a journey to submit to the neces¬ sary delays of surface-road transit. It is a great pity that our citi¬ zens, our officials and our newspapers cannot be brought to look these facts in the face. INDICATIONS are not wanting that the architects of this coun¬ try, or at least, of this part of the country, are " turning over a new leaf." For a long time past the favorite copy-book to which they have turned for inspiration or something in default of it bas been the Romanesque, and it must be acknowledged that though a considerable amount of very creditable work has been done in that style; there has been, however, very little vitality in the work. The artist has, all along, been dealing with dead forms, and, as we have said, there are now very convincing indications that the " Romanesqued " American work of. say, the last ten years, has passed into tbe shades where are to be found the old " Old Colonial," the Queen Anne, the French Renaissance, and other art forms, wherein a past manner but not a past spirit was imitated. And the new copy-book—what style does it contain ? It is not easy to classify hybrids; but the nuiin features of the new style are Renaissance in character, and if one must be more particular, the Renaissance of Italy. We prefer, bowever, to let the matter stand at Renaissance. To a very considerable extent, in the most recent work done in this city, the arch, as the salient feature of the design, has given place to the column, as may be seeo, if not already observed, in the new Hotel Imperial, the Judson Memorial Church, the Berkeley School on 44th street, the new Metropolitan Telephone Company's Building on Broad street, the Mail and Elxpress Building, the Greenwich Savings Bank on 6th avenue and 16th street, the new Delmonico Building, Harrigan's Theatre, and many other buildings, all by architects of some renown, who are usually followed by the smaller fry. By these structures we may see how rapidly we are running towards the rusticated, pedimented, corniced, festooned, balus- traded, pilastered, columned style of building. There is very little doubt that this is the beginnitig of a widespread change, and for some years to come now the new copy-book will be used exten. sively—^in a scholarly way, by our trained architects; and with vagary and appalling ingenuity for ugliness by those promoters, those embodiers of hideous vulgarity, the contract "arch-i-tecte." THE movements to open new streets in the 2M aod 24th Wards, to widen certain streets in the lower part of the city, and to establish in crowded districts small parks, gain considerable inter¬ est from a paper recently published by Dr. Anders in the Univer¬ sity Medical Magazine. It is shown therein from careful observa¬ tions made in Philadelphia, that there is a close relation between phthisis, or consumption, and the width of streets. The observa¬ tions extend over a period of fifteen years ; and a careful location Of all the deaths due to consumption shows a very disproptHrtionate rate of mortality in narrow, dark streets compared with the wider ones; and in confined tenem»>nts, where the outlook is upon neighboring walbi, oompaared with houses having direct sunlight. Dr. Anders' conclusions are. as he pokits out, similar to those arrived at by Dr. Arthur Ransom in England. Indeed, in a sense,