Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 39, no. 986: February 5, 1887

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i^ebruary 5, 1887 The Record and Guide. 167 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. 191 Broadway, IST. IT. Our Telcpliouo Call is - - - - - JOHN 370. TERMS: ONE YEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXIX. FEBRUARY 5, 1887, No. 986 The stock market shows surprising strength in view of the really alarming news from Europe. It is evident that if there was no foreign selling our market would advance. There are apparently a number of gigantic railroad combinations on foot, and this gives strength to a number of specialties. Money is very easy. There is plenty of unemployed funds, and the trade of the country is on a very wholesome and profitable basis. It is noticeable, however, that real estate transfers and plans for new buildings do not compare very well with last year. There are fewer transactions and not so many new houses contemplated as then. But real estate people generally think we are going to have a very good spring season. Readers of The Record and Guide will recall the fact that five years ago we pointed out the danger to our seacoast cities if proper defenses in the way of ships, fortifications and guns were not provided. So much attention is being paid to this important matter by the press that we do not care to say much about it now. What we need is guns of large calibre, for it seems to be agreed that if we are to have ordnance similar to those turned out by the Armstrong and Krupp factories, there is no time to lose, as it will take two years to supply the necessary plant. But it see.ms that there are e.x:perts who think we need not wait for these steel guns. They say it is possible to cast an iron gun having a 12-inch calibre which could endure a reasonable number of rounds with charges of 150 pounds of powder and projectiles weighing less than 700 pounds. This would be sufficient to pierce 12 inches of iron armor. Such guns, though far inferior to the best Krupp or Armstrong steel and wrought cannon, might do excellent service in defending our harbor against iron-clad fleet?, and a supply of them could be furnished within a few months time. Congress ought to authorize the casting of a sufficient number of such guns to at least partially guard the great cities on our seacoast. But the cities on our Northern border are also becoming alarmed. When the St. Lawrence River is navigable, Great Britain could send her gun-boats, of which she has over a hundred, into our northern lakes. Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Buffalo and a great many other minor cities would be in almost as much danger as New York. On this point the Chicago Inter-Ocean says: The people of the United States are jast as much interested in meeting an attack made from the North as they are in meeting one made from the Atlantic. They are just as much interested in the protection of Detroit aud Toledo and Chicago as they are in New York and Boston and Charleston. It is to be noticed in this connection that whenever the question of coast-defense is discussed in the Western papers that an attitude of fairness is taken. It is also to be noticed that when any proposition looking to the possible contingencies in the West is brought forward that it is immediately opposed by certain New York papers. But, putting aside this smallness of spirit, that is so often manifested in the Easfc, the Western papers would, if danger threatened, be ready to urge the prompt support of any reasonable proposition looking to the defense of the Atlantic coast. It is sincerely to be regretted that our newspapers take so provin¬ cial a view of every expenditure for the nation at large. New York requires a great deal of federal money to improve its harbor as well as to put it in a proper state of defense, but our journals, as a general thing, charge corruption on any expenditure proposed for the West, Northwest, or South. A real metropolitan journal should think first of the nation and be equally fair to all sections. Several of our city papers are small enough to object to a $7,000,000 appropriation for river and harbor improvements. We ought to spend and could afford fifty or sixty millions annually for several years to come. The outlay would be repaid twenty times over in the material advancement of the country. There are plenty of useful ways to spend our Treasury surplus. AU signs indicate unparalleled activitynorth of the Harlem River during the current year. Some large parcels of land in that section are to be offered for sale in the spring, extensive building improve¬ ments are projected, and the Suburban road is being extended with an ardor which not even the cold weather can altogether chill. It is evident that the river cannot much longer remain a dam to the flood of population which is now beginning to flow over into the north end. Residents, however, make considerable complaint on account of the neglect with which their interests are treated by some of the city departments. To secure a good plan for street improvements the Park Department was given control of the high¬ ways; but it is proving a better agent for locating streets than for meeting the subsequent demands that must always follow after the construction of maps. North-end residents would prefer now to be under the more direct control of the Public Works Department, and to see more of the projected streets opened and the building sites by which they are lined made available for improvement. They wish also to see their sewer system perfected. But their final prosperity must, of course, depend on the perfection of the system of rapid transit, by which they will be placed inconstant, unbroken and cheap communication with the southern part of the city. Men who are opposing any of the various plans for rapid transit which have been projected between the Battery and fhe north end are enemies of that section of New York. They are enemies of the entire city, indeed, and the friends of Brooklyn and New Jersey. But, at the worst, not more than eight or ten years can pass before the demand for improved transit will become so irresistible that these obstructionists will be swept out of the way. The Astor Bui'ding. Nobody who has seen the Western tJnioti building in Bi-oad street, or the building for the same corporation at Fifth avenue and Twenty-third street, would have any difficulty in referring the Astor] building in Wall street to the same architect. Mr. Harden¬ bergb always sets out with as strong a sense as that entertained by Dickens' character of " the vally of peace and quietness." and that sense, indispensable as it is to any successful work of architecture, is more evidently indispensable than ever where the case is of a work of elevator architecture. The architectural necessities require a base proportionate to the superstructure and a mass of pier visibly adequate. The commercial necessities require the greatest amount of opening mechanically attainable, and they require in particular that the basement shall be as nearly as possible all glass. To reconcile this conflict is the business of the architect, unless, as often happens, he gives it up as irreconcilable, or, aa perhaps still of tener happens, he does not perceive its existence, With this latter kind of architect judicious criticism has as little to do as possible. All this, of course, is an old story and has been told of all modern commercial buildings. The introduction of the elevator has made things worse by increasing the height of the wall, and therefore by calling for a greater area of support, which the improver of real estate is greatly disinclined to allow. On the other hand, the dis¬ crediting of iron in the principal supports of a building has involved an increase in the area of its supporting piers. They must be mases of masonry large enough, practically, to carry what is above them, and it is the architect's business to make them visibly large enough for this purpose. This is so difficult oftentimes that when an artistic architect gets an elevator building to do one is inclined to condole with him on his problem as an artist, even while con¬ gratulating him on his job as a practitioner. Mr. Hardenbergb has one rather unusual advantage in the breadth of his front, which must be nearly 65 feet, while two city lots are considered quite ample for an eight-story building, and it is very common to see such a building on one, as is the case with the L adjoining the Astor building on the west, though candor compels us to say that the designer of that work betrays in it no conscious¬ ness of laboring under any special disadvantage. A drawback to the effect of the Astor building, almost as common as the scantiness of frontage, is the fact that it cannot be seen all at once. An eight- story building, in so narrow a street as Wall, must be looked at piecemeal, since the top of it is at an angle of something like 80 degrees. A vertical slice of it can be seen from down New street, at a distance that permits the eye to take it in at once from top to bottom, and a very agreeable impression the slice makes. The front has a clear three-fold division, both vertically and laterally, formed vertically by a basement of two stories, a prin, cipal stage of four, and a story in the roof, with an intermediate story above which runs the main cornice. The basement is of Scotch stone with two heavy gray granite oillars at the entrance,, the superstructure of red brick and red terra cotta. Laterally the division is into a centre, and two wings, these latter recessed above the main division, so as to account for the low gable that sur¬ mounts the centre, and themselves crowned with a steep Mansard, of which only the dormers are visible from across the way. When the Western Union building in Broad street was com¬ pleted it was suggested in these columns that the chief fault of its composition was the inadequacy of the base, and that this might have been amended by carrying it a story higher in stone and retaining the importance of the central division by assigning to it also an additional story, thus subordinating the upper third. The arrangement thus indicated has been adopted here, surely with an