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Real estate record and builders' guide: v, 87, no. 2246: April 1, 1911

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April I, 1911. RECORD AND GUIDE 577 ^ ESTABUSHa)^fflJ^CH£l*;^1868, DeVoTeD 10 F^ESTAJZ.BinLD!f/G Ap-ClfrrECmm.E ,f[ciUSEU01B DESOFlfTltMl, Biisit/Ess A^fD Themes of GEifeR&L IjfTERfST, PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS Communications should he addressed to C. W. SWEET Fubiished EVery Saturday By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO. President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE Vice-Pres. Sc Genl. Mgr,. H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER Nos. 11 to 15 East 24th Street, New Xorb City (Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.) "Entered at the Post Offi 'ce at New York, N. Y., as second-class tn atlcr." Copyrighted, 1911, by Tho Record & Guide Co. Bol. LXXXVI. APRIL i-i 1911. No. 2246 A WHOLESOME MARKET. THE real estate market has suddenly become very active, and it is certainly very wliolesome. Its dominant charac¬ teristic is a steady demand for centrally situated property on the part of business men. who propose to use it in their busi¬ ness. A steady stream of purchases and leases in and near Fifth avenue continues to be announced; and many of them result in the construction of more or less costly buildiugs. The vacant loft buildings cn Fourth avenue are filling up rap- Idly and with the very best quality of tenants, and plans are teing announced for new improvements in this district. The streets running out of Long Acre Square are, also, the loca¬ tion of an active real estate and building investment, chiefly tor business purposes. On the other hand, apartment and tenement house construction is duller than it has been for many years. A nnmber of new apartment houses will be started this spring on the West Side; but Washington Heights is in a state of suspended activity and very little is being done on the East Side. The outer boroughs are doing rather better than Manhattan, but not so very much better. Specu¬ lative operations are not very numerous, and will not become so until after the contracts are signed for the construction of new Subways. In all probability no marked change for builders will take place during the remainder of the real estate season, but a condition will be created by the end of the summer which will favor an increase of activity next fall and winter. By that time there should be a resumption of apartment-house building on Washington Heights and else¬ where. The obstacles to a revival of loft construction should be relieved, and the Subway business will be settled in one way or another. The reaction of general business upon the real estate market promises to be beneficial. No great busi¬ ness activity is to be anticipated, but neither is any period of real depression. Capital will accumulate rapidly and will have to be invested, and no doubt a larger share of it will seek investment in real estate. A period of moderate busi¬ ness activity, coupled with abundant money, is always peculiarly favorable for real estate operations, and that is the ge-neral condition which will probably prevail late in 1911 and early in 1912. DEFECTS OF CITY DWELLINGS. THE announcement of the construction of a large and very expensive .co-operative apartment house at 72nd St. and 5th Ave. is highly siguificaiut. It means that even very rich people are coming more and more to the conclusion that private houses in Mauhattan cost more than they are ■worth. Of course there will always be some few people who will prefer to have a private house, just as there has always been a small minority of well-to-do people in Paris who re¬ fused to live in an apartment house. But their number will constantly diminish. Private houses are being abandoned, not only because they are so very costly, but because in tbe great majority of cases their occupants get a pretty poor value for their money. The back rooms of these bouses on the lower floors are almost always dark and gloomy, and they usually are so high that an elevator is necessary. More¬ over, the habits and the economic situation of very rich people tend to make them turn to apartments, American business men are not making money as fast as they did from 1900 to 1906; and according to all appearances, the extra¬ ordinary opportunities of those years are not likely to return. Of course there are still large and increasing numbers of such families, but more than formerly this class of people will be obliged to husband their resources. They will have to count the cost of their city establishments, partly because they are not making money so rapidly and partly because they are spending more and more of their time and money in the country. It may be confidently predicted that much of the vacant land now remaining om Fifth avenue will be improved with apartment houses, and tbat the same statement will hold true of Park avenue. Consequently prices on the East Side are not likely to go any higher. Even the very rich are obliged to seek relief from the consequences of purchas¬ ing private residences at the prevailing level of values. When these houses happen to be vacant they cannot be rented to advantage because tenants willing to pay the necessary rents are scarce, and that is another reason for their lessening popularity, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE HOLOCAUST. ACCORDING to tbe evidence already submitted, tbe blame for the awful loss of life in the Washington Place flre should be charged more to the factory laws than to the build¬ ing laws. The buildi'ng proved to be really fireproof, as it was supposed to be. Ouly the contents of certain floors were burned, and not a life need have been lost in case the lessees of these floors had adopted any precaution against a fire and its consequences. It is true that the fire-escape was in a bad condition, and that the Building Code should be changed in order to provide more accessible and capacious means of escape in case of an emergency. But bad as was the condition of the fire-escape and narrow as were the stairs, four-fifths of the employees escaped without harm; and if the other fifth did not escape, tbey were evidently prevented from doing so rather by panic, ignorance, and wholly unnecessary obstacles (such as looJ^ed doors) than by any lack of available means. Necessary as it may be, consequently, to provide improved fire-escapes, it is far more necessary to improve the facTory regulations. Inflammable debris should be cleaned up every day, and flnally flre drills should be required at least once a week and State inspectors should have the power to start a fire alarm at any time without warning; and in case the man¬ agement of the factory had failed to drill his employes, be should be responsible under heavy penalties for his failure. The final and really effective precautions against such calam¬ ities must be taken by the operator of the factory, and it is useless to burden the builder and the property owner with expensive requirements, which might be deprived of all util¬ ity by an unscrupulous or careless manufacturer. The ulti¬ mate individual responsibility belongs to the occupant of the building; and no attempt should be made to substitute a merely mechanical for what is really and necessarily a per¬ sonal responsibility. THE SUBWAY CONFERENCES. DURING the coming week announcement will probably be made as to the result of the prolonged conferences which have been taking place between the committee of the Board of Estimate and tbe directors of the Interborough Company; and, according to newspaper rumors, the result will be a disagreement rather than an agreement. If such proves to be the case, public opinion wil! most assuredly be very much nettled, A properly conducted conference should certainly have discovered that mo agreement was possible without wasting two months or more. The only certain thing about Subway construction in New York City is the interminable delays which precede every new enterprise. The points upon which the conference are said to have split are only two in number. The committee of the Board has in¬ sisted that the Interborough Company should yield to the city an indeterminate franchise upon a continuous East Side or West Side line, so that in case the city ever decides to set up an independent system, it will have a definite terri¬ tory of its own. It does not seem to the Record and Guide that this particular requirement of the Board of Estimate is a fair one. The Interborough Company contracted to back aud operate a certain definite route; and no attempt should be made to force it to surrender any essential rights which it enjoys under its first contract. If the City should ever want to break up the Interborotigh system, it could do so by taking over aud operating an upper East Side and lower West Side system; and there is no reason why such a system could not be operated as advantageously as the present Sub-