Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 63, no. 1614: February 18, 1899

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February i8, iSgg, Record and Guide BifsDfEss jublkkvES or Ce}1ei^ lKtQ|FS1« PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS Publitked every Saturday, Tglbfhomb, Cobtlakdt 1370. Couimunlcations should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-lG Vesey Street, J. 2. LCNDSBY, Business Alanager. "Entered at the Post-OJjice at New York, N. Y., asseeondrclass matter." Vol. LXIII. FEBRUARY 18, 1899. No. 1,G14 WHEN the stock market advanced In the face of such con¬ ditions of weather as have prevailed this week, it cer¬ tainly g^ve the most remarkable evidence yet seen of the confi¬ dence of the investing and speculating publics. Th-er© must he great faith in the permunence of improved business when, instead of declining, as might reasonably have been expected, with one-half of the country snowed under and ita progress arrested, even though it might be for a week only, prices advanced and that materially. Not only have there been substantial advances ■ because of new and favorable developments in pai-ticular direc¬ tions, but the market has given signs of broadening, speculation having reached issues that did not respond to the good feeling prevailing in the past two months. Some weeks ago we pointed out that any new upward movement would include these issues. There seems to be be a tacit determination to keep everything favorable to the fore and t® overlook what is otherwise. The in¬ terruption to business and increased working costs on the rail¬ roads will appear later, but are taken to be more than fully offset by the growth of traffic confidently believed to be coming. The inability cf national income to meet expenses cuts no figure in the minds of the people who make the stock market, for the reasons given here last week, and because it is taken for granted that the administration will not hesitate to avail itself of Its powers to issue income bonds, or other forms of bonds, if neces¬ sary to prevent any inconvenience arising to the nation from that source. I^ter on, maybe, this very fact will be used against the market if it will help to secure a different object than the prime movers in it have now in view, but at the moment it !a put aside as inconvenient and without infiuence. The fact that it renders an early reform of the currency impracticable is also coolly overloked. Back of the bull enthusiasm there l3, rS. course, something more than a mere desire to see prices go up. The improvement in business is growing so rapidly that the set¬ back of this week is accounted as nothing against it. The cir¬ cumstances ef the times enable arrangements to be made which could not have been attempted three years ago. Corporations are able to anticipate the maturing of their mortgage debts, and thereby greatly improve their financial standings; electrical de¬ velopments are opening up ever larger fields of enterprise, and under the stimulus of greater demand prices are advancing pretty generally all along the line. With such influences as these at work, it is hard to dampen publie confidence In corporate securities. PRESIDENT FAURB'S death, the sad news of which has just been received, may serve, te check reckless agitation in France and bring tbe disorderly to a sense of the peril they threaten their country with. That Europe haa no guarantee of the long continuance of the present low rates for money seems to be the opinion of the financial authorities; one of the best of them says: "As to the future course of the market, there must be great uncertainty. The expansion of trade, the great develop¬ ment that has recently taken place in stock exchange speculation and the knowledge that a number of foreign loans are being projected, all point to a probable increased demand for money, and consequently a possible hardening of rates." Among the governmental loans recently financed are, the Prussian and Ger¬ man Imperial 3 per cent, loans, together amounting to ?50,000,- ,000; the Chinese 5 per cent, railway loan of $11,500,000. and the New Zealand $5,000,000 3 per cent, loan. Municipal corporations are also becoming large borrowers. Bid= for an Edinburgh $5,000,- 000 3 per cent, lean covered double the a!::r-,:nt asked for and ranged from 2 per cent, to 5 per eent. preniiiim. An Argentine loan of $30,000,000, secured by ll'e spirit tax, is also reported as placed. The French Parliament has raised the duties on foreigrf winrs. The- French shipping trade was unusually active lact year, the entries of vpssels laden having increased, compared with the previous yfir.r, frrm 14,927,131 tons, to 15,939,106 tons, and the clearances from 10,346,239 tons to 10,670,952 tons. Berlin views wiih much satisiacticn the successful floating of the two home loans previously mentioned. The fact that a single institution, the Deutsche Bank, was in a pceition to promptly re¬ spond to the overtures of 'be Imperial and National governmentr, nnd the further fact that the needs of the two governments are now met for some time to come, creates confidence in the situ¬ ation. Since, however, it is now reported that foreign investors will get from 25 tc 50 per cent, of their bids, it may appear to tl;a outsider this confidence in Germany is a little overdone. What these flgures really mean is net clear, but as it is a rule among subscribers to a good loan to ask for several times more than they really wish for, on the theory of proportion a very lar,Te part of the loan must be going away from home, a fact that does not sustain the view first presented when the results of tho bidding became known, that it was German investment capital that had taken the loan. Fined down, it means that a German bauk was able to suppiy the governmental wants and to secure the profits of issuing the loan, but even the satisfaction arising from this fact is lessened by another, that the bank selected ro carry out the operation is the one most in touch with British and American capital. Vienna Is still sadly disturbed Uy the apparent impossibility of Austria and Hungary concluding a satisfactory fiscal agreement, to which is added tbe injury done by standing anti-Semiticism and a newly developed outcry among the Ger¬ man elements of the Empire against Rome. THE VINCENT BUILDING. OP the very recent tall buildings the Vincent, at the south¬ east corner of Broadway and Duane street, which is not yet completed, is the most striking and. perhaps, the mott interesting. Nobody who has seen the Times building and the Union Trust and the Prudential in Newark, has any need to ask whose work it is. The authorship is quite unmistakable. The author has reverted. In the present work, to the respectable tra¬ dition of these structures, after an escapade which recalls the parable of the Prodigal Son. In this unlueid interval he has pr-:- duced the second tallest building on Manhattan island, and the very best abused, and upon the whole justly so, even though the denouncers of it have failed to take fair account of the author's conditions and iimitaticns. It is damning the mere re¬ cent edifice with praise altogether too faint to say that it is a n- lief and a refreshment after the other, Now, after the St. Fan', the work goes, comparatively speaking, bravely ou. There is nothing particularly trying or unusual about the problem in the case of the Vincent. The site is a parallelo¬ gram on a corner, something like 50 feet on Broadway by 100 on Duane street, and the building, "astonished at its own modera¬ tion," stops at what is now for such a site the modest altitude of sixteen stories. It is apparently built of Indiana limestone, really, of course, of a steel frame to whfich the ostensible walls are a mere screen. But it is throughout designed without refer¬ ence to the actual structure, and is to be considered and judged as a structure of masonry. To say this is to say that it affords no help toward a solution of the real problem of the tali building, and that it is uot to be regarded as a serious work cf architecture. But that is only to say what must be said of all the other steel- framed, tall office buildings in the United States, with half a dozen exceptions, At the very outset, however, it sbculd be made clear and emphatic that in the case of a building which is not "tbe real thing," but a conventional treatment of a feigned con¬ struction, criticism must be also conventional. Otherwise it would consist of denunciation only, and all the tall buildings con¬ ventionally designed would be put upon the same level and re¬ ceive the same condemnation. Whereas everybody knows that there are immense differences among them. That the Vincent is, upon the whole, one of the gcod ones few observers will be prepared to deny. The assumption that it Is of masonry is upon the whole consistently carried out. From the illustration, and even from hte building, one could not say deci¬ sively that it was inconstruclible in stone, or even that it was not constructed in stone. It is true that, given these dimension.9 and a stone construction the walls would look painfully thin. But it does not follow that they would be dangerously thin. What the piers lack in breadth would have to be made up in depth, and the architect would be censurable, if he had built walls ac¬ tually so thick as would be required to carry themselves for six¬ teen stories, not to have exhibited and emphasized their thick¬ ness. The single segmental arch cf the front, the three seg¬ mental . rches of the side, seem to exercise a thrust that re¬ quires to be taken up by powerful abutments. But the apparent abutments arc provided in the separate and solid treatment of the corners, "epikod," and held firm as they appear to be by the great superincumbent height of fourteen stories. It is true that in the building this abutment is not so visibly rr.pplied as in the drawing. The cuter corner pier would kave given a great assuv-