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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 73, no. 1871: January 23, 1904

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January 23, 1904. RECORD AND GUIDE 161 lpH2lu>186a. ^shAess AilDTHEuea or GEifa^. iKnJlgp PflUCB PER YEAR IN ADVANCE. SIX DOLLARS VubUshed tVerv Satardap Communications sbould be addieaaed to C. W. SWEET. 14-16 Vesey Street, New YorK S= T. LUTDSBT, BuBlneea Manager Telephone, Cortlandt SIST "JBmttred at the Post Office at New Tork. N. Y., as aecond-clasa matter." Vol. LXXIII. JANUARY 23, 1904. No. 1871. THE increasing activity and the advancing prices of the Stock Market during most of the past week have been just what was needed to restore confidence in the general sit¬ uation. The character of the buying was perhaps no better than it should be. It undoubtedly came chiefly from profes¬ sional Interests, who are seeking to advance prices, and then to sell out their purchases to the public at these higher figures; but it was justified by the general conditions, by the ease of money, by the improved business prospects, and by the more hopeful feeling, which is -prevailing in commercial and financial offices. It is not to be expected that any very general or pro¬ longed rise in prices will result, because, as the large Issue of bonds during the past week shows, the railroads and the big corporations will need whatever money there is available, in order to reimburse themselves for expenditures already made and to provide for new improvements. But the great thing is that business should resume a generally healthy tone, and that financial and business men should ^ face the exigencies of a presidential year with justifiable confidence. That condition of things is now coming to pass. It looked at one time as if the depression brought about by dear money would spread from Wall Street throughout the whole business organism; and with that danger averted, it will not be necessary for people to sail as close to the wind as many of them have been doing during the past few months. PRESSURE will undoubtedly be brought upon the Legisla¬ ture during its present session to pass some bill which will provide for the effective supervision and regulation of the local transit service of New York City. Two proposals have, indeed, already been made—one by the Merchants' Association to add a couple of members to the State Railroad Commission with special local functions; the other by a local rapid transit association to constitute a special metropolitan transit com¬ mission. While fully agi'eeing that effective local supervision is necessary, the Record and Guide does not see the necessity of instituting the additional administration machinery pro¬ posed by either of these bills. There are constituted authorities in the city at the present time who are fully capable of super¬ vising in the public interest the service offered by the local transit companies. It has always seemed to the Record and Guide that, for instance, such supervision should be placed in the hands of the Rapid Transit Commission, because the regu¬ lation and improvement of the transit service Of New York is inseparably connected with the measures which are being taken to add to that service. Comptroller Grout has recently made the suggestion along the same lines that the supplementary power should be conferred upon the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Well! it would certainly be better to confer the power on this governing board of the city, than to consti¬ tute for the purpose a new and expensive commission; and the Board of Estimate has one great advantage over the Rapid Transit Commission—the advantage that all of its members are responsible to the voters of the whole or a part of the city. This comparative Irresponsibility, however, is a disadvantage under which the Rapid Transit Commission labors in all of its work, and it is a disadvantage which only becomes serious when the Commission shows signs of losing touch with popular opinion. Even though that body is less directly responsible than the Board of Estimate, it should, as long as it retains its pres¬ ent functions, be placed in control of such a complicated tech¬ nical problem as that of transit regulation—especially when this technical problem is so closely connected with the func¬ tions which it now exercises. It should be remembered, also, that two elected officials, the Mayor and Comptroller, sit in the Commission, and have great weight in its deliberations. In any case, however, we do not want any more local commissions; neither have New Yorkers any faith in the beneficial effects of the addition of two local members to the State Railroad Com¬ mission. The business is one which either the Rapid Transit Commission or the Board of Estimate should undertake, and to give either of them necessary power would be a further step in the way of the consolidation of power in a few competent hands, which should he the object of any constructive munic¬ ipal legislation. WHEN it was proposed during the last session of the Legislature to assess the value of the land and the buildings separately on the New York tax books, the Record and Guide objected on two grounds, (I) That in a borough such as Manhattan, which contained a great deal of fiuid prop¬ erty, it was practically impossible in a great many instances to separate the value of the building from the value of the land, and (2) it would complicate the work of the deputy assessors, whose time and knowledge is strained hy the work they are now doing. The validity of both of these criticisms is con¬ firmed by the arbitrary nature of the value placed in tax books for 1904 upon old buildings situated in valuable locations. In the cases of new buildings of standard types, such as a six- story tenement or a skyscraper, it is possible to separate the value of the building from the land with some accuracy; but in the cases of those obsolete buildings, which still frequently remain upon costly property In Manhattan, there is no way of estimating what they are worth. They are worth something, because in case they were not there, the owner would have to erect some kind of a tax-payer; but if the next day the decision is made to erect a new skyscraper on the laod, the building is worth only the few hundred dollars which a house-wrecker would give for it. At that time, we instanced the old Progress Club as a building of this kind, and the way in which the as¬ sessor has dealt with this plot shows that the Illustration was well chosen. He adds $80,000 to the value of the property, be¬ cause of the building, yet this structure is useless to its present owner, and will he sold for a few hundred dollars to a second¬ hand building materia! dealer. The Evening Post mentions some other examples of this kind. The assessor makes the United States Realty Company pay taxes on ?55,0OO as the value of the Ti-inity Building, Yet, how much has the Realty Com¬ pany been able to sell it for to the ho use-wrecker? The Stewart Building is appraised at $520,000. apart from the land; and yet if the city decides to build its Court House on that site, it will be worth nothing at all. So it is with, hundreds of similar in¬ stances. These arbitrary valuations are not the fault of the assessor. There is no rule which can guide him iu placing a value upon such buildings. He must simply make his guess; no matter how absurd the guess may become a few weeks after. IT does not follow that the law providing for the assessment of land and buildings should be repealed. The class of building of which the old Progress Club and the Trin¬ ity Building are examples, are. indeed, an extremely impor¬ tant class of building, and are. as it happens, generally situated upon land which is difficult to assess accurately, because of the frequently speculative nature of its value; but the amount of this kind of property in the city will probably, in the course of time, tend to decrease rather than increase. At any rate, we can understand that the help which the separate assessment of land and building will afford to the task of making a scien¬ tific and just assessment list is worth the risk and trouble which particular class of property will necessarily give the as¬ sessors. The attempt, however, that the tax reformers should next make is to improve the administrative machinery which stereotypes the assessments. The Record and Guide has al¬ ready frequently pointed out the absurdity of asking any asses- sior to appraise 150 parcels of property every day for 100 days with any pretence to method and accuracy. Not only should the assessors be given more time for the work, but they should not be shouldered with the exclusive responsibility which they have at present. A board of review should be established, which shiould go over the list before the books are opened and test the work of the deputy assessors. No one man's judgment should be final, as it now practically is, in such an important matter as officially appraising the value of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of real estate. Finally, the bill passed last year providing for the publication of the assessment list, should be amended, so as to insure prompter publication. At the pres¬ ent the Tax Department has until July 1st to furnish the "copy" to the City Record, and thereafter the City Record can print the list at its leisure. This means that the assessment list for 1904 will not be published and be made readily accessible until the deputy assessors have started out on their job of making the assessments for 1905. It would be far hetter to advance by several months the time for beginning the assessment, and then arrange to bave the list published, if npt contemporaneously