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June 6, 1914 RECORD AND GUTOE 1007 rounded by factories and warehouses. There are houses of worship that are older and handsomer, and besides there is now another St. John's in the same ecclesiastical denomination — the great . cathedral on Morningside Heights. The ' architectural idea of having the sidewalk of Varick street built through the porch of the chapel would be excellent if the trustees desired it, but as they do' not, and as thev are the most competent persons to decide, what reason is there for others to assume the responsibility and the expense? ----------------1---------------- Why Fifth Avenue's Prestige Should Be Preserved. Editor of the Record and Guide : The high-class retail business for which Fifth avenue is so well known is the most sensitive and delicate organism imaginable, depending first on the ex- clusiveness of the neighborhood; sec¬ ondly, on the nearness to the homes of the rich and the large hotels, and, thirdly, on its lack of congestion, es¬ pecially on the sidewalks, so that the customers are not "crowded or jammed in a hurly-burly crowd on their way to and from the different shops. Wholesale trade, on the other hand, is crowding the retail as firmly as the re¬ tail businesses invade the residence sec¬ tion, their object being to be as close as possible to their customers. Fifth avenue, below 34th street as far as 23d street, has already been doomed. Below 23d street it is irretrievably lost. ' Nothing of any nature can ever re¬ deem it. Of primal importance, there¬ fore, is the preserving of Fifth avenue from 42d to 59th street. Loft buildings have alreadv invaded some of the side streets with their hordes of employees, under the guise of "light manufactur¬ ing," and, if the occupancy of the build¬ ings were restricted so that no manu¬ facturing could be done either on Fifth avenue or from Madison avenue over to Sixth avenue, the problem would doubt¬ less be entirely solved. Employees from these loft buildings cannot be controlled. They spend their time during the lunch hour and before and after business congregating , in crowds that are doing more than any other thing to destroy the exclusiveness of Fifth avenue, as witness below 23d street, and when the exclusiveness and desirability of Fifth avenue is destroyed, the value of real estate on Fifth avenue will depreciate immediately. This is not a plea for property-own¬ ers, but for the preservation of Fifth avenue, the most wonderful shopping street in this country, and in many re¬ spects more wonderful than anything in Paris or London. The city would lose millions of dollars in taxes in not pre¬ serving it. In case that the occupancy cannot be regulated through the Factory Commis¬ sion or otherwise, the next best step would be the limitation of the height of buildings in this zone, thereby_ di¬ minishing the volume of operatives. From a business standpoint, this would be no hardship on the owners of prop¬ erty, for the most paying investment today in the section under discussion is a six-story building. A large office building and a large hotel, owing to the nature of their occupancy, are no dis¬ advantage. A first-class hotel, on the contrary, is a decided advantage. If the scope of the commission is broad enouo^h, I would recommend the limitation of the height of buildings through the city into zones, so that the different sections may be treated in a manner that would comply with their local problems. For instance, if the Greenwich section and the old drygoods section above Chambers street were treated as a manufacturing center, this would work out to the salvation of the neighborhood. The tenements of the East Side furnish the operatives for manufacturers of this city, and therefore should factories be established in the neighborhood more convenient to their homes, which this would do, it would be of mutual advantage, at it would sup¬ ply a line of tenancy for buildings that are now nine-tenths vacant. Values north of 42d street, on the side streets between Fifth and Madison ave¬ nues, as compared witli those between I'ltth and 6ixth avenues, are indicative ot the value of property occupied tor exclusive business, and that occupied lor lott business. Between Fitth and Madison avenues, where there are prac¬ tically no lott buildmgs property is wortn $4,50U and up a Iront toot. The buildings are ail used for retail busi¬ nesses, while between i'lfthand bixth ave¬ nues tnere are already a number of loft buildings which have determined the oc¬ cupancy of the remainder of tnese blocks and the value of real estate is from $2,700 a front foot to as high as $5,000, according to its nearness to Fifth avenue. These are the conditions as they exist today, and it something is not done speedily to check further inroads, the same condition now existing below 23d street will, in a few years, prevail on Fifth avenue, north ol 34th street, and t-ifth avenue's prestige will then be lost to this city forever. FRANK D. VEILLER. 10 East 47th street, June 1. New York As a Future Steel Center. New York City is the largest market for structural steel in the United States, as everybody knows, and the Merchants' Association claims that steel shapes will be manufactured here at less cost than in the Pittsburgh district, when the barge canal is ready for.service. Not only shall we then be able to get Lake Superior ores, on which Pittsburgh de¬ pends, for a lower transportation rate than Pittsburgh pays, but Adirondack, Newfoundland and Cuban ores can be put down here for a lower price still; and the iron and steel scrap used in manufacturing also costs less in this port than at Pittsburgh. The Hudson Kiver valley was once a great iron man¬ ufacturing center, and is likely to be again, because, when considered with New York harbor, it is the strategic center of the world's trade and has the resources of a continent behind it. The Merchants' Association points out, fur¬ ther, that in the last analysis the choice of a location for steel-making is a ques¬ tion of freight rates, and that this dis¬ trict has exceptional advantages in this respect, not only for assembling the raw material, but also for distributing the finished product. Already two blast fur¬ naces are under construction in this har¬ bor, and are referred to as proof that there are manufacturers in the steel in¬ dustry who hold the same view. This new industry, should it desire to locate in this district, must, however, be treated in a broad way by our commer¬ cial bodies and city authorities. They must not expect that room will be found for great steel mills on the congested waterfront of Manhattan or Brooklyn, or even in The Bronx. More likely the mills will be on the Jersey side of the harbor, up the Hudson, where there are iron mines, coal depots and deep water, and on the Jersey meadows. No feeling of jealousy against the suburbs should be shown in this matter. Let the out¬ skirts have the smoke-emitting mills and the laborers, and let New York be con¬ tent with the trade and commerce they will bring in their train. Transit in Qaeens. At a joint meeting of the Board of Di¬ rectors and the Transit Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of the Bor¬ ough of Queens, held this week, reso¬ lutions were adopted opposing any change in the plans of the Dual Subway System tending to delay the inaugura¬ tion df that part of rapid transit into Queens Borough which passes through the Bridge Plaza, Long Island City, and requesting the Board of Estimate to make at the earliest possible moment the necessary appropriations requested by the Bridge Department for the recon¬ struction of the Queensboro Bridge to adapt same for rapid transit trains. It was also the sense of those present at this meeting that the Board of Estimate and the Public Service Commission should take into consideration the seri¬ ous matter of the reduction in the width of the present roadway by the operation of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit trains, and that if it is finally determined that this roadway must be reduced in width, then any such reduction of roadway be compensated for by providing additional and sufficient roadway space on some part of the bridge, or by any other meth¬ od. Seven separate contracts have been let to date aggregating $5,601,842, for every rapid transit extension in Queens Borough included in the Dual Subway System with the exception of the lines across the Queensboro Bridge and the extension of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit System from Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, to Jamaica. Of these extensions which connect with the station on the Bridge Plaza, in Long Island City, work on the Astoria extension is completed, and construction of the extension to Wood- side, Elmhurst and Corona is progress¬ ing rapidly. The construction of the big passenger transfer station on the Bridge Plaza in Long Island City is now under way, and it is hoped will be finished in a little over a year, the Steinway Tunnel will be ready for ope¬ ration by January 1st, 1915, and its ex¬ tension to Queensboro Bridge will be finished shortly after. To connect all these lines across the Q.ueensboro Bridge it is necessary that work be started as soon as possible as it is esti¬ mated that it will take two years from the time the work starts, to complete the reconstruction of the bridge. THE ADVISORY COUNCIL. (Continued from page 1004.) live at the eighth annual conference of the National Tax Association at Denver, September 8-11, 1914. Recodification of the Labor Law. Recodification of the Building Code. Secured Debt Law. Billboard Law. Tax Lien Law. Inheritance Tax Law. Workmen's Compensation Law. May¬ or's Market Commission. Land Bank. Law permitting the Board of Asses¬ sors to fix the area of assessment. "Free port proposition" as outlined by the Merchant's Association. Im¬ provement of the Port of New York by the expenditure of $5,000,000, as recommended by Justice McLean. "Down-town Hotel" as supported by the Wholesale Drygoods Centre As¬ sociation. Construction of a cross-island canal connecting Flushing and Jamaica Bays. Railroad terminals for freight on river-front. New Jersey-New York Bridge pro¬ position, as recommended by R. G. Cooke. Movement to regulate negro occu¬ pancy of property as recommended by the proposed Property Owners' Improvement Association. Improvement of 34th street and Fourth avenue, as recommended by the Murray Hill Association. Proposed local assessment upon Brooklyn Heights property to provide a route for a tunnel for a subway, which will run through the heights without even a station to relieve the locality. The Inspection Pest. (Brooklyn Eagle.) The system reeks with incompetency. It reeks with politics. It reeks with graft. Inspectors with scant idea of the work before them are getting $1,200, $1,800, $2,000 and more. Many of these men owe their positions to the pull of politicians. It is true that most of them are on the civil service list, but such matters are easily arranged by the pro¬ fessional politician. There are a cer¬ tain number of places to give out and for these places the politicians have their men in readiness, and in many instances the men are placed there. —Ten years of American occupation of the Panama Canal Zone were com¬ pleted on May 4, 1914. The decade has seen the virtual completion of the canal and the beginning of its commercial and naval use.