Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 49, no. 1255: April 2, 1892

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Aprd 2,1892 Record and Guîde. 601 s^ estxbushed'^ íÁw^ch 211;'^ i eee. Drví)TED 10 f^L EswE. BuiLDif/c A^oiíiTECTaĸE .HousdJold Degofí^tioií BUSÍIÍESS A^ÍdThEMES Of GEfjEIVl !;JT£f\ESÎ PRICE, PER TEAR IIV ADTANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. TKLKPHONK .... CORTLANDT 1370. Communieations should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14 & i6 Vesey St. J. 7. LINDSEY, Business Manager. "Entered at the Post- offlce at New Tork, N. Y., aa second-class matter." VOL. XLIX, APRIL 2, 1892. No. l,25.ĩ 111HE liquidation which Las been apparent in the atock market -*- for more than two weeks now shows little or no outward sign of ceasing. While the declines have been sharp and heavy the rallies have been small aud feeble. The acceleration given to the dechne in prices yesterday, liowever, makes it reasonable to ihink that a stay in the downward movement, even if not of long dura- tíon, is in order. The desire to sell is seen on all side's and its very unanimity ought to be anindicationof early temporary termination, However that may be, there is certainly no evidence of a near return to pcsitive bullishness on stoclTS. Hcre and there some con- dition or combination may afifect a particular security and the market may show some temporary sympathy with its movements, but while general business, particularly the manufacturing business, is in the condition which the quotations of prices prove it to be, there can hardly be a return to activity on the bull fide of the stock market. Besides, the liquidation yet sêen has not oíîset the intemperate buying in the late and now much-lamented coal boom. The recurrence of gold export is another veryunfavorable feature, and equally unfavorable is the selling and consequent decline in the Vanderbilts. N(.t to be forgotten elther wheũ a catalogue of unpromising influences is being made are the buU points now being circulated on the Gould issues, nor the strongly humorous flavor in the assertion that the decline in Lake Shore and New York Central is due to the'r sale by Vanderbilt interests in order to raise money to buy New England. The bond market is also feeling the ejîects of the liquidation as well as the investment stock market, and this, more than anything else, indicates a necessity for realizing in important quarters, which must exhaust itself before those markets or the spticulative market can show any sound improvement. T30TH in England and on the continent the improvement when- -■-' ever it takes place is all in spots. The general conditions continue to be depressing ; and the gtneral result little besides declining prices and diminishing busiuess. The Austrian flurry, which took place early in the year, owing to Ihe prospective resumption of gold payments, has now given way to a depression which will increase the difficulties which the Auatrian and Hungarian governments are meeting in accumulating all the gold they need. Lately Argentiue securities have been strouger because of the report of the Governor of the Bank of Englaiid, and because of the improved political condition of that country. But it cannot^be said tiiat the stateof commercial affairs in Argentina is improving. There has now been a cessation of cash payments to tbe majoiity of the public creditors for upwards of a yearand, tbisarrangement was entered into for the express purpose of enabling the State to avoid for a certain time the external drain on its resources, and above all to reduce the paper currency within more manageable limits. Tliis has not been done. The funding of the coupons has in reality increaaed the debt, but the paper cur- rency appears in nowise reduced, and its depreciatiou, although not so heavy as it was some montbs ago, is still very great. According to the best autborities the Kepublic, in order to pay its way, must succeed in bringing about a vvholesalecomposition with itscreditors. This has not yet been attempted, and until it has been arranged specie payments to the bond-holders cannot be resumed. The com-- munity cannot possibly meet its liabilities. T HE new building law is slowly progressing through the Legis- lature. It is now in tbe Senate, having passed the Assembly a number of days ago. On its passage through the Lower House the clause which required that existing hotels be provided with at least one continuous line of fire-proof stairs from cellar to roof was stricken from the bill, although a reprint of the bill, subsequent to ita passage by tbe Assembly, still containa the hotel-staircase clause. This error, howevcr, was correeted in the engrcfsed and certified copy transmitted from the Assembly to the Senate. The require- ment that all public school buildings bereafter erected shall be con- structed entirely fire-proof was retained in the bill. A new feature, and one that will bother the Board of Education a great deal more than the comparatively simple aud iuexpensive oue of making the floors fire-proof, is the requirement wbicb Assemblyman Webster, Cbairman of the Cities Committee, caused to be inserted in the bill, namely: " Nopublicschool buildingshall hereafter be erected within two hundred feet of a block occupied in whole or in part by a crirainal court or prisoo, and, conversely, it shall not be lawful hereafter to erect a crimi'-al court or prison witbin ; tbe same distance of a public school building." Col. Webster's controversy with the Board of Education over tbe Sylvan place site for a new school-house immediately adjoining iu tbe rearof the new Harlem Court House building was the actuating motive for tbe legal restriction that wiU hereafter keep school buildings a goodly dis- tance away from prison and criminal court buildings. The difĩi- culty of selecting school sites wiU tbereby be inrreased in some few cases, but the requirement tbat wiU keep school childreu away from tbt; demoralizing sights and sounds of degraded men and women will meet with public approval. THE Senate Committee on Cities gave a public hearing on the building law last Tue.sday afternoon in Albany. Amend- ments to the bill were then presented by th6.building trades' repre- scntatives to create a separate Department of Buildings. These amendments provide for the transfer from the Fire Department of the Bureau of Buildings, and from the Sanitary Bureau of the Healtb Department of tbe Bureaus of Plumbiũg and Light and Ventilation to tbe new Department of Buildings. The head of the new department is to be called tbe Superintendent of Buildings, and he is to hold office for six years, at an aunual salary of |.'),000, The expenaes of the Department of Buildings is to be provided for in the same manner as tho expenses of other departments of the municipal government, but for the balance of this fiscal year the Comptroller is to turn over for the use of tbe new department the unexpended balancea heretofore appropriated for the tlu-ee present bureaus, For salaries andordinary expenses tbe cost of running the new department wiU be no greater, if as great, as that of the presenl bureaus, but there must be added the item of rent for the new department, With eighty to a hundred millions of dollars going annually into new and alterations to old buildings, and an actual addition of fifty millions of dollars yearly to the lax rolls, whatover may be the slight additional cost for the inspection of buildings over the systems now in vogue ^will be of small conse- quence compared with the relief to arcbitects, builders and owners in the saving of time and the cost of duplicatiug and triplicating of plans, In asking the Senate to add to the buildiag law the amend- ments wbicli will recreate a separate Department of Buildings the builders" representatives have acted under advisement. The only way a separate department can be attained tbis year is tbrough amendments to the building law, aa it is too late in the session to introduce a distinct bill with any reasonable hope of ita passage in both Houses before the final adjournment of the Legislature, only three weeks distant. At tbe same time, this combining of the building law, in which there is absolutely no politics, with the pro- visions for a separate department, in which there is more or less politics and political patronage, is tbe very thing that the Revision Committee, or a majority of its members, sturdily refused to do in preparing the building law, because, to the minds of the members of that committee, a good building law is of the first importance, andthe cbannels of administrating the same of secondary import- ance. But tlie step has been taken under chaiiged circum- stances, and tbe biU was reported back to the Senate by the Cities Committee on Thursday last, with the separate department feature incorporated; the biU must now stand or fall as a whole. A sanguine view of the situation would impel a belief tbat the bill will not fail, as it bas the approval of the Mayor and all tbe otber leaders of tbe dominant local party, excepting only one man—the President of tbe Fire Department. Of the three fite commissioners, one, Mr. Robbins, who is an appointee of Mayor Grant's, has been absent in Europe; the second, Mr. Eickolî, is heartily in favor of the removal of the bureau of buildings from the Fire Department; and the tbird, Mr. Purroy, tbe President of tbe Department, is opposed to tho removal and has announced bis determination to beat tbe bill, if he can. Mr. Purroy expects to run for au elective office this fall, a judgesbip, having recently succeeded in getting an act tbrough the Legíslature which enables bim to ruu for an elective office and at the same time retain his office and salary as a fire commissioner. If he should succeed in his threat against the bill for a separate department, later on the bulding trade organizationa may play the fair game of turn about aud defeat Mr. Purroy at the ballot box. ----------m---------- BOTH from the Board of Fire Commissioners and Board of Heallh communicatioDS were sent to the Mayor objecting to the removal from their respective departmentsof anybureauorbureaus.