Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: [v. 90, no. 2316]: August 3, 1912

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AUGUST 3, 1912 REAL ESTATE PROSPECTS ON LEXINGTON AVENUE Corner Lots Have Advanced $10,000 to $15,000 Each Under the Influence of the Subway—Inside Lots Held at $1,200 to $2,000 a Front Foot—Types of Construction. I EXINGTON AVENUE is about to oc- '-' cupy an important place among the city's north and south thoroughfares. Up to the present it has been something of an anomaly, quite as much so as Fourth avenue before the boom struck It in 1906. Though less conspicuous than many of our thoroughfares, Lexington avenue re¬ flects in its own way the growth of New Torlc City. A couple of generations ago it was virtually a country road; or, to put it more accurately, the area now tra¬ versed by Lexington avenue was rural territory. In 1850 Bull's Head Village was still in existence—one of those queer, ragged set¬ tlements that grow up about the out¬ skirts of most large cities. It straggled over the area now bounded by Second and Fourth avenues. Twenty-third and Twenty-seventh streets. This community derived its name, and more or less of its liquid refreshment, from Bull's Head Tavern, about which were grouped the cattle markets of the day. Just beyond was real country, with At about Forty-ninth street, near Third avenue, a small settlement known as Odellville, had sprung up about a suc¬ cessful road house kept by Odell. In the neighborhood of Fiftieth street Pot¬ ter's Field had been established. Yorkville was the next settlement. Be¬ tween it and the smaller hamlet of Odellville was another stretch of coun¬ try, with the homes of the wealthy set here and there among picturesque sur¬ roundings. Yorkville, which has practically merged its identity with that of the upper East Side and lower Harlem, was an import¬ ant community. Its boundaries would correspond with Fifth avenue. East River, Fifty-seventh and One Hundredth street. Its principal thoroughfare was the East¬ ern, or Boston, Post road. Within this area, which represented a territory con¬ siderably larger than the original hamlet along the East River from which York¬ ville sprang, were the country homes of some of New York's wealthiest citizens. The roster of Yorkville's old families tirely without its booms. Ten years ago, notably in the Forties and Fifties, there was a buying movement which grew to fairly large proportions. This was based entirely on the plans of the New York Central for electrifying its suburban lines and rebuilding the Grand Central Sta¬ tion. It received considerable impetus also from the fact that the demand for fine residences in the Fifth avenue sec¬ tion had caused a corresponding exten¬ sion of the better class residence area along many of the side streets towards Lexington avenue, from the Fifties north. The speculative buying done in antici¬ pation of this was rather more extensive than the demand warranted. To indicate the speculative interest in this thorough¬ fare, one brokerage firm in the early part of 1903 sold about fifty houses and an¬ other more than thirty. Although Lexington avenue was at that time included in the subway routes, comparatively little of the speculative interest of eight or nine years ago was founded upon this fact. LEXINGTON AVE, LOOKING NOR TH FROM GRAMERCY PARK. New Co-operative Apartment House in right foreground. LOOKING NORTH FROM FORTY-SECOND STREET. On left are New Structuros—Part ot the New York Central'! Proposed Group. here and there the estate of some sub¬ stantial citizen. That of Peter Cooper was at the southwest corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-eighth street. The Eastern Post road passed in front of the tavern to about the line that is now Lex¬ ington avenue, paralleling this line to Forty-second street, where it merged into Third avenue. The Anson G. Phelps estate was at Twenty-seventh street, running down to the East River. About Kips Bay, in the vicinity of Thirty-second street, clustered another settlement. Where now stand the car barns at Fourth and Lexington avenues and Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets was Sun Fish Pond, spreading over to Madison avenue and finding an outlet to the East River by way of a brook which, insignificant enough in the sum¬ mer, was swelled by the winter rain and snow into a stream that caused the resi¬ dents of Rose Hill and Murray Hill con¬ siderable trouble. The Turtle Bay colony extended from Forty-third to Fifty-first streets. Here was Cato's road house, the dinners of which drew fashionable patronage from the city. would include such names as Astor, Beek¬ man. Brevoort, Gracie, Jones. Lawrence. Paulding, Prime, Provost, Rhinelander. Riker and Schermerhom. Half a cen¬ tury ago their country houses occupied the choicest sites of old Yorkville. many of them being on or near the Boston Post road. Gradually the stages that lumbered out from the city up the Boston Post road were superseded by a more rapid means of conveyance—the horse car. Some thirty years ago Yorkville, of which Third avenue was then the busiest artery of traffic, shares in the extension of the ele¬ vated lines. Cable cars displaced the horse cars and were in turn cast aside for electric cars. Meantime the old estates had been cut up into building lots. The city had over¬ spread Yorkville. Fine mansions had dis¬ appeared to be replaced by three-story houses. In its lower and middle stretches Lexington avenue attracted a substan¬ tial class of private house residents. Tenements rose rapidly where the thor¬ oughfare leads from Yorkville into Har¬ lem. Lexington avenue has not been en- Since the boom of 1903 spasmodic pur¬ chasing campaigns have developed. There was one in 1907. In 1909 another flurry of activity passed over the avenue and since then there have been intermittent signs of interest, mostly of a speculative char¬ acter. The activity of these periods was apparently the result of emphasis laid on one phase or another of the plans of the Xew York Central Railroad. Singularly enough, the intense profess¬ ional interest usually manifested at actual digging for subway construction has so far found no marked expression in the case of Lexington avenue. This fact gives the thoroughfare one of its chief points of interest. For undoubtedly the oper¬ ation of a subway almost its entire length, or from approximately Thirty- fourth street to the Harlem River, with connections at the Grand Central Station, into the Bronx and Queens; and at three or four ot the city's most prominent cross- town thoroughfares, will create a marked change in the appearance of Lexington avenue. In the light of experience, it should also bring about a favorable re¬ adjustment of values. The intermittent booms of the past