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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 68, no. 1747: September 7, 1901

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September 7, 1901. RECORD AKD GTJIDE: 28s ■ gy " ESTABUSHED-^ «WPH £1*?^ 1868. Di/oteD to R^.L ESTME . BuiLDIf/o ft:R.cKrreCTUR.E .t(cWSEe(OlD DEBQf(HimJ, BusifiEss AttoThemes of GEtk«^, IjftERpsT, PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS PabUshed eVery Saturday Communlcationa should be addreaaed to C. W. SWEET, 14=16 Vesey Street, New YorK J. T. LINDSEY, Businesa Mftoagrer Telephone, Cortlandt 1370 "Entered at the Fost 0.^ce al Neu> York. N. Y.. as second-class m.atter.' Vol. LXVIII. SEPTEMBER 7, 1901. No. 1747. ■^^ HE news of the dastardly attack on the life of President McKinley, coming as we are going to press, leaves us no time to do more than express detestation of the crime and our ■ sympathy with its distinguished victim. What infiuence this event will have on the mind of the business public it would be in bad taste at this moment to conjecture, though we fear the movers of markets will not he affected by any such delicate considerations. All thoughts for the moment ought to be those of sympathy toward the appointed leader of the nation and of maintaining the dignity of the nation itself in a moment of ex¬ cessive strain on its feelings. y N spite of the appearance of strength conveyed to the Stock y Market hy the clever manipulation of the past few weeks, quotations reveal a steady realizing by holders of long stock. Critically examined prices show that much of the gain made by the manipulative tactics of several weeks has been lost, and re¬ cent facts add the important point that they cannot stand any organized attack. Of course, the stocks that have been most prominent in speculation suffer most, on the rule that it is the most protrusive head that receives the blow. The immediately effective cause of the break In the Stock Market is the condition of the collateral market for money; the great impelling and mov¬ ing cause is the over-speculation and expanded values of the spring which have not been thoroughly discounted yet. Previous anticipations of dearer money are being realized. The real pinch will not come until the end of this or the beginning of next month when the interior demand should have reached its max¬ imum. Exchange is at a point which promises some relief ihrough gold imports, but gold only comes on the invitation of high rates for money and ceases its visits directly those rates decline. In times of low values and depressed prices it is always potent for good, but not except relatively in those of expanded values. Still, as was pointed out last week, it would be easy to organize a movement of gold this way, but there is no reason why it should come out of the ordinary course. Europe is watching our market with interest and evidently fears a demand for gold from this side; otherwise the discount rates of the great national banks would not have stood unchanged for weeks, while the condition of their reserves and gold holdings is such as would have ordinarily called for reductions. The Bank of Eng¬ land Is stronger now than it has been at any other time in three years, yet its discount rates remains, week after week, at 3 per cent. European trade reports are somewhat more cheerful than they have been of late, but the improvement is no more than should be expected with the emergence from a holiday season into an active one. \X 7 HO is to succeed the late John R. Thomas as architect of Jt JL the Hall of Records? is a very important question, but its solution is not assisted by the suggestion made this week that his estate has the right to appoint his successor. If such a rule held good, it would apply to private as well as public work, and we cannot conceive either the public or private owners rel¬ ishing the position that this would put the heirs of a deceased architect in toward their work. It is undoubtedly the fact that the architect selected to complete the task that Mr. Thomas de¬ signed and began, should be a man in full sympathy with his aims and who would receive the commission as a behest to ful¬ fil his intention and not merely as a job, obtained in the ordi¬ nary way of business. The Board of Estimate who have the appointment of a new architect have it in their power to make or mar a costly and important public building, and it is to be hoped they will aquit themselves faithfully of the duty that is placed upon them; they cannot do this better than hy following a concensus of professional opinion which in. this matter will not err, however wide of the mark it may be of th© legal view of the case. John Rochester Thomas. ^r- HE death of Mr. John R. Thomas, at the age of fifty-three, *• calls for something more than was given in these columns last "week, because of his general professional merits, and even if his death did not open what threatens to be a very burning question, who is to go on with the Hall of Records, the most costly and important public building now under construction in New York after the Public Library. Mr. Thomas, it appears from the obituary notices in the daily press, came to New York in 1882. He had been practising archi¬ tecture before that, since and perhaps before his majority, in Rochester, and had won a good repute hy some of his works, and the standing of an expert in prison architecture by one of them, the Elmira reformatory, we believe it was. What determined him to come to New York may have been his success in obtain¬ ing, in competition the commission to build the Calvary Baptist Church in West Fifty-seventh street, or possibly he obtained that work only after he had made his migration. At any rate the church was finished early in 1883, for a critical notice of it appeared in these pages in May of that year. The church at¬ tracted attention by the unusual extent of its frontage, which is not less than 150 feet, and repaid this attention, upon, the whole by the interest of its design. The chief fault, in the general scheme, was the keeping of the whole front virtually in the same plane, whereas a vigorous protrusion and recession were evidently indicated for expressiveness. None of the detail was exquisitely artistic, but on the other hand, none was downright bad, and the building was upon the whole a credit to its archi¬ tect. Practically, as a solution of the problem of an "auditorium church" the building was so successful as to launch its author upon a very successful career. He was probably employed, dur¬ ing the following years, to build more churches than any other architect in the eity of his adoption. He once mentioned to the present writer tbat he had won some incredible number of com¬ petitions, it would be risky to give from memory the exact num¬ ber, during his first year in New York. At flrst they were mostly churches. There is a fragment of a church in Seventh avenue, above the Park, which shows a better study of detail than the earlier and more pretentious work, and is still worth looking at. And the West Hariem Methodist Church, at the eorner of Seventh avenue and 130th street, is another essay in the chronic problem of the auditorium church which is of high interest, of more, indeed, than the costlier edifice in Fifty-sev¬ enth street, possibly, in part, by reason of the pecuniary limita¬ tions. It is really a good thing, a nearly square plan, with a chapel on the longer side and a parsonage on the other, and the auditorium fairly well expressed on the outside. The tower at the corner ought to be bigger, properly to dominate the pile, and doubtless would have been if the architect had had the money to make it so. But still it does fulfil its function, and with its plain, frank shaft, its effectively deep openings at the base, its conbelled turret, and its steep hood, one is inclined to call this tower Mr. Thomas's most artistic performance. The inapprecia- tive possessors of the church have spoiled it, so far as they could by painting over its honest Croton brick, but in spite of them it is still a welcome sight. How Mr. Thomas got into the designing of armories we do not know. But his Eighth Regiment Armory, at the corner of Park avenue and 90th street, with the addition on Madison avenue for Squadron A, is very clearly the best thing in the way of military architecture we have to show, and doubtless the most popular and vei-y likely the best of its author's works. This is no small praise when we come to consider the number of able men who have tackled the same problem in New York with less success. The mediaeval expression of a fortress of obsolete methods of war, the crenellations and machicolations and so forth, all this is introduced here artistically and by way of allusion, as it were, rather than by way of fabrication and affectation. And cer¬ tainly the result is charming of the 'big, round, red towers and their connecting curtains. The building is one of our chief municipal ornaments. More frankly modern, of less romantic association and of less picturesqueness is the architect's later work, the armory of the Seventy-first at Park avenue and thirty- fourth street, in a monochrome of gray masonry, less attractive than the deep brickwork of the other. But that also is a well- considered design, though nobody would think of calling it charming. The fact that he got these things to do led many members of