Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 62, no. 1596: October 15, 1898

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October 15, 1898. Record and Guide 531 BUSDllEStitlblaEHESOfGEjjEIVXlKltll^l^ PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS Publislied every Saturday. TsLEPHONE, Cortlandt 1370. CcimmualcBtions should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street. J. 1. LllfDlSEY, JBusiness Manager. "Entered at the Poat-O.^iee at New York, A', r., as second-class matter." Vol. LXII. OCTOBER 15, 1S98. 1,596 BUSINESS in the stock market has been more active thia week and prices have advanced somewhat,, and in a sufficient number of instances to give ground for the claim that a new bull movement had been begun. Students of the market, however, will not be deceived by these appearances; to them they simply suggest a change of the speculative base due to causes not likely to be of long duration. The most important of these causes, the renewed heavy foreign buying of wheat, has already been to some extent checked by a rise in freight rj.tes; and the move¬ ment of gold this way, the second in importance of these causes, will at least be impeded by the advance In the Bank of England rate. A fact that discourages the hope of more than a merely reactionary advance at this time is the moderate decline that has been obtained, the market taken as a whole, and the really high prices at which many securities still stand. Such prices are due entirely to speculation, and it follows that they must come down before a new movement on the long side can he begun with any Lope of success. Such a movement would not be supported by the professional element without the certainty of a big public, to take it up when started, and at the moment the public is shy of specu¬ lative Issues. Too many improbable stories of coming dividends and of other imaginary favorable circumstances are afloat, sim¬ ultaneously with the report that one well-known property will pass the dividend on its preferred stock, to remove suspicions of the soundness of present quotations and of the suitability of the situation for a general advance. The case of Lake Erie and Western preferred which ordinarily would not have much effect, arising as it does at a time when only the most rosy views of business were held, is likely to be particularly influential in keeping buyers away and of making investigations into the merits of securities more the rule than has been the case for some time past. If powerful combinations choose to put some securities, in which they are particularly interested, up to figures away beyond either their speculative or intrinsic value they can, of ccurse, do so, but they are likely to have to bear the con¬ sequences themselves, because the public has not lost all the caution it acquired as a result of its sufferings in '93 and follow¬ ing years, although, it must be admitted, that the last rise showed that it had lost a good de&I. SOME surprise may be expressed at the substantial advance made in the Bank of England rate, which now stands at 4% as against 3% on Wednesday. This is an unusual jump, and one made cn!y in the face of serious emergencies. Tbe rate was sim¬ ilarly moved cn the eve of the Americo-Spanish war, but was soon dropped again when it was found that that conflict was to make little or no demand on European funds. War considerations had, probably, a remote influence on the extent of the last ad¬ vance, although the simultaneous demand of Berlin and Ns\v York for gold, together with the active commercial need for money, may perhaps explain it. With such an incident as that at Fashoda cn the carpet, in the present temper of the Frencli people, the Directors of the Bank may have thought it advisable to throw protections around their reserves merely as a proper business precaution. The discouragement of the French claims, by the Russian press, however, makes war over this matter, little probable as it ever was, more improbable than over. The agi'i- cultural party in France recently summarized their achievements ^g^' agitation during M. Meline's ministry as follow.^: their nurf-V^'^ ^°'" ^^^ suppression of Octroi tares, restrictions eettiuff eTiol ^^ °^ artiflcial wines from foreign dried fruit, speculative bhw'' "^""^ties, on industrial alcohols, for the and the conclusio ''' ^'""'^''' ^^^'°^^ ^"^^ Importation of for- the contractor au^''"'^"'°^ ^^^ "'^"''^ ""^ ^^^""^ '^ ^°°*^' '*^" promise of work ^"^S^^^^^^S credit to agriculture in the Bank giving bounties on the cultivation of allk. flax and hemp; increasing the duties on plga, pork, lard, horses and preserved meats and fruit; the creation of agricultural war¬ rants, and various provisions in the budget for the Department of Agriculture, Eoom conditions are prevailing in the German iron and steel trade; in some districts the foundries and works have reached the limit of productivity. A subject which Is at¬ tracting earnest attention is the continued scarcity and dearness of meat. Meetings are being held at many points to discuss the matter and the Government is being petitioned to remove the prohibition of imports. Business in Vienna and throughout the dual-empire continues to be depressed by the interminable dis¬ cussion over the States treaty. While the chances for an agree¬ ment have been increased by recent events, no agreement Is made, and the everlasting wrangle creates nervousness. This delay Is becoming ridiculous, because It would probably be easy to prove that owing to the injury done to business by the contest more has been lost by either Austria or Hungary than is in¬ volved in their difference of opinion as to the amount each should contribute to sustain the imperial state. Gen. Roea's in¬ auguration as President of Argentine, it is reported, will be fol¬ lowed by propositions for a State monopoly of spirits and to¬ bacco, the assumption of tbe provincial debts and a fresh Issue of currency at 2% to 1 and other objectionable financial measures. Chili, too, has some economically bad schemes in view for the creation of industries to be supported by bounties. The past quar¬ ter has seen varying movements in prices abroad; iron, steel and coal advanced, while textile materials and wheat declined. THE BAYARD BUILDING DURING the past few months, the attention of all the passers up Broadway, whose attention was not preoccupied, muat. have been drawn by the tall, white building, which has been ris¬ ing, as much like an exhalation, as is the custom of the sky¬ scraper, on the north side of Bleecker street, and separated from Broadway only by a narrow court aud the building of the Man¬ hattan Savings Bank. The new building occupies the site, indeed, of the old and earliest Bank for Savings, a Palladian building, erected forty odd years ago, and more successful in design than most that have been done in that manner since. It was grievously defaced by the fire which destroyed Its neighbor on the corner of Broadway, and within this decade the institution which it had housed was removed to the building that everybody knows and almost everybody admires, on the corner of Fourth avenue and 22d street. These facts, with pictures of the old and the new bank build¬ ings, are set forth in a particularly satisfactory and a particularly sumptuous illustrated "prospectus" of the new building which oc¬ cupies the site, and which, we further learn from the same source, is named the Bayard Building, after William Bayard, the flrst president of the flrst savings bank in New York. But tbe build¬ ing does not owe its chief interest to any of these extraneous considerations. The experienced observer sees, even in the passing glance that the cable car allows him, that it affords averyoriginal and a very expressive solution of the problem of the skyscraper. If he be familiar with tbe work of Mr. Louis H. Sullivan, be will be strongly reminded of that work in general by the general as¬ pect of the new buiidiug, and an unexecuted design of Mr. Sulli¬ van's for an office building in Cincinnati, if he happens to be familiar with it will occur to him as the prototype of much m the design here executed, and especially of the treatment of its crowning member. If he be a student of architecture, he will take the earliest occasion to walk down the side street, and con¬ front the building, and then the detail will make the Identifica¬ tion of its author positive. Mr. Sullivan's work has been imi¬ tated, and in some cases with much skill, but never to the point of detecting a practised eye. This detail is unmistakable. No¬ body else could have done it. But let us first consider the general scheme. This is plainly enough imposed by the scheme of the actual metallic construc¬ tion. In a sense, this may be said of all the steel-framed tall buildings. But In many, in most of them, the object of the de¬ signer seems to be to evade or transcend the limitations of his structure, and to do something different. In the Bayard Build¬ ing, with one questionable and conspicuous exception, to which we shall come presently, the architectural scheme is founded upon the structural scheme, and ia the exposition and development of that. The two modes of composition are radically different, and lead to radically different results. The structure of the Bayard Building, "the cage," consists, so far as the external architecture is concerned, of six posts In the space of a little less than eighty-four feet, thus dividing the front into flve bays of fourteen feet each. In a front which is or sim¬ ulates a conr-truction of masonry, the terminal piers would be and should be distinctly broader than the Intermediate. This is the case even In a lintelled construction, as In the Grecian tem¬ ples, where the eye demands that the angle should be fortified, by ^te