Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 39, no. 997: April 23, 1887

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March 3S, 1887 The Record and Guide. 645 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday, 191 Broad^way, 2^T. IT. Onr TelepMone Call la jrOH[N 370. TERMS: ONE ¥EAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Bushiesa Manager. Vol. XXXIX. APRIL 23. 1887. No. 997 We have good reason to believe that the Vanderbilts have agreed to build an underground road from 33d street to the Brooklyn Bridge. It will be a tunnel undPr the widened and reconstructed Elm street. If our information is correct, this matter was arranged while the public attention was being drawn to a proposed elevated road on Broadway below 34th street. It is said the whole thing will be completed within twelve months' time. If carried out this will not really hurt Broadway property except in prospective value. The increased value which would accrue to our great thor¬ oughfare will in this event be transferred to the widened Elm street. Our first choice would be an arcade road under Broadway, extending from the Battery to the upper end of the island, having for its first connection the Forty-second Street Grand Central depot. The construction of such a gigantic work would make Broadway, for generations to come, the most valuable street in the world. It would double, if not quadruple, the rental value of its places of business. A small but active body of Broadway property-holders have been blindly fighting their own interest. And now comes the announcement of the utiliz-ition of an old charter for an under¬ ground road from the Brooklyn Bridge to 3M street, and running under Elm street and Lafayette place to 4th avenue. There is no avoiding it; w© must have some swifter means of getting up and down town. A railroad on solid earth seems to be indispensable. If we cannot have the arcade or underground in Elm street then would we favor an elevated road on Broadway. But the arcade people ought to be stirring. They have got their charter, the courts have decided in their favor and they should at once go to work. If they do not commence right away the Vanderbilts will build under Elm street while they are getting ready to begin. One thing is very certain, Elm street is to be widened and a connection is to be made with Lafayette place. But one thing ought to be guarded against—horae-cars should never be permitted on the surface of this reconstructed streefc. The metropolis needs one great north and south thoroughfare for the exclusive use of vehicles other than horse-cars. This year there promises to be fewer changes on the 1st of May than usual. Since the introduction of flats the tendency has been to occupy new apartments in the fall instead of on the Ist of May, and this change will save a great deal of inconvenience and waste. Indeed, the return from the summer vacation would seem to be the better time for seeking new quarters for living. As for summer sojourning places, nearby localities are in the most favor. This is to permit business men to continue in town during the summer, and to take their holidays on Saturday and Sunday insiead of absenting themselves for two or three weeks at a time in midsummer. Places not distant from New York more than three hours are getting to be naore and more in favor. The high premium paid for a five years' lease of the two auction stands on the Exchange shows how valuable space is becoming in the Auction Boom. It is understood that some twelve or fourteen persons are very eager to be represented on the auction stands in the Exchange, but under the present system there is no room for them. The difficulty could be easily arranged if the present absurd practice of sielling all property at exactly 12 o'clock was given up. Were sales to be held at intervals from 10.30 A. M. till 1 P. M., the Auction Boom would accommodate five times the present number of auctioneers. These gentlemen should be the first to move for a reform. Every day'when there are many sales shows how impos¬ sible it is to do justice to the property offered when the entire business has to be transacted between 13 M. and 12.30 p. u. pay higher taxes into the S'ate Treasury than any other portion of the State. Municipal license laws, such as those provided by the Crosby bill, would have put a couple c-f million dollars in our city treasury, and in so far would have relieved' our real estate tax¬ payers. But the liquor tax bills now pending in the Legislature are all as wrong in principle as they would be pernicious in practice. A correspondent criticises Mayor Hewitt for his hasty action regarding Pelham Park. But while the Mayor has and will make mistakes, for he is an impulsive man and allows his feelings to sway him too much ; yet, all things considered, he makes an admir¬ able chief magistrate of this city. His appointments so far are all right. The city will be a gainer by his occupancy of the Mayor's office. The document he has sent to Albany respecting city affairs is an admirable one. He favors a new municipal building, and one is undoubtedly very much needed. It would be economy to build it. Then we ought to have more small parks. Mayor Hewitt is also right in protesting against the building of any subway not controlled by the city. We should not give valuable franchises for nothing to private corporations. We doubt the wisdom of trying to pass any liquor taxing bill this session. This matter should be referred to the people next fall, and there should be an understanding that a flexible anti liquor and Ucense law should be adopted next spring. This would provide for high license in the large cities and for local option where a prohib¬ itory law could-be enforced. The Vedder bill is .objectionable, in hat it is another meanis ot making New York and Kings Ciounty We are apparently in the begmning of a large emigration from abroad. The next Congress ought to guard our shores against undesirable incomers. Our almshouses and lunatic asylums show that tens of thousands of paupers, lunatics and criminals are yearly sent to this country to be taken care of. Thea, as a matter of self- preservation, we should nofc permit stunted and diseased emigrants to settle in this country. The mosfc undesirable of the emigrants who come here hail from Italy. They are inferior in every way and are not the kind of people we wish to become parents of an American race. In shorfc, no emigrant should be allowed to land unless he or she has money enough to support them, some educa¬ tion and sound minds in sound bodies. We have plenty of poor material for parents of our native born, withoufc importing them from abroad. ----------» The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. One of the most palatial of the " commercial palaces " recently erected is the building of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in Chambers street, near Broadway. Ifc is useless to preach either to owners or to architects that there is something incongruous and unsuitable, and consequently vulgar, in giving a character of sump- tuousness and magnificence to commercial buildings. Neverthe¬ less, that is the fact. Es.jecially is it true of a savings bank, where the money of the depositors is used in ornate architecture and luxurious fittings. A popular savings bank needs a large, light and airy room to accommodate its business, and its exterior should denote such an apartment. Its architectural exoression should be an expression not of luxury, bufc of sfcrengcli and security. Lavish ornament and precious material are alike out of place. Everybody who enters the Emigrant Savings Bank and remarks its walls of polished marble, its gilded grills and its elaborate woodwork, must be sensible of the incongruity, and feel thafc plain sandstone or brickwork would be much more appropriate. It is, we repeat, quite futile to point this out either to directors who would probably def end the luxury as an " advertisement," or to architects, who would reply thafc they must make the most for their own reputations out of such commissions as th^^y get, and that it is not their fault if nobody employs them to design bu'ldings in which prodigal expenditure is suitable. The mischief of " palatial" office buildings and hanking institutions is thafc there is nothing left in the way of architectural richness to point the distinction when a church or a public building comes to be builfc. Neverthe¬ less ifc is true that even when ifc becomes " wasteful and ridi-uIous excess," this excess is not to be imputed as a faulfc to the archi¬ tects, seeing that it can only be amended by the cultivation of a better sense of propriety on the part of the whole community. The owners, even while they are spending money lavishly on unsuitably rich materials and unsuitably elaborate ornament, redeem their reputation as business men by adding to the building they need for their own purposes another building in the form of additional stories for rental. This increases the difficulties of the designer. Few architects are so fortunate as the architect of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, which is a merely a savings bank, or the architect of the Dry Dock Savings Bank, which is a savings bank with a dwelling above it. In most cases the designer is required to perch an office " investment" over his bank, and to dis¬ tinguish the latter as best he may. This is the case even in the Produce Exchange, where the office building is nearly equal in importance to the exchange proper. Ifc is the case also with the present structure where the bank and tbe non-bank divide between them the two fronts, of which the building architecturally consists. Perhaps in the Chambers street fronfc, which is much the more elaborate and "palatial" this division is meant to be marked by the use of material. As a matter of fact the three lower stories are in granite,' and the superstructures of five stories, including a story in the roof, ""sof light Btoner Of these fivestories, however, three are united and