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November 27, 1969
RECORD AND GUIDE
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PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET
Publisfted Every Saturday
By THE RECORD AND GUTDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer. F. W. DODGE
Vioe-Pres, fi: Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER
Nos. 11 to IB Hast 24th Street, Ne-tv Yorlc CEty
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.)
"Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y.. as second-class matter."
Copyrighted, 1909, by The Record fi; Guide Co.
Vol. LXXXIV.
NOVEMBER 27, 190D.
No. 2176
PERHAPS the most loteresting real estate ne'ws of the
week is the anuoiincement that the Pennsylvaiiia Rail¬
road Company is really going to lay ont an eighty-foot street
opposite the Concourse of the station, and running from
Thirty-third to Thirty-fourth street. This street wi!l pro¬
vide an additional means of access to the station and will
greatly facilitate the movement of the vehicniar traffic
to-wards and a-way from the Terminal. It is probable, also,
that the company can afford to surrender the 80x200 feet,
required for this street witliout any loss to itself. It owns
very large frontages on both Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth
streets and opposite the station, and tbe increased value of
the remainder of the plot resulting from the frontage on the
new streetway wili be sufficient to compensate the company
for the cost of that part of the property which will be turned
over to the public use. The whole incident is a lesson in
the way street improvements could almost, if not quite, be
made to pay for themselves, provided the city had the legal
power to condemn the property immediately adjoining that
needed for a new street, and provided the cost of condemna¬
tion proceedings to the city was not unnecessarily increased
by wasteful and unscientific methods. When the Pennsyl¬
vania Railroad Company secured the right to build a Ter¬
minal at Thirty-third street and Seventh avenue, a wise and
far-seeing city goverument, possessed of sufficient powers,
would bave behaved in the following manner: It would
have foreseen both the need of abundant access to the new
station aud the congestion of traffic which would take place
in Greeley Square as a result of the business development of
the neighborhood. It would, consequently, have purchased
all the property between Seventh avenue. Sixth avenue.
Thirty-fourth and Thirty-first streets; and it would then
have prepared a general plan of street improvement, which
would have provided both for convenient and sufficient access
to the station and for the needs of future traffic across Gree¬
ley Square. Then the rest of the property would have ijeen
re-sold to private individuals in plots adapted to the needs
of the neighborhood, and at prices which would have reim¬
bursed the city for the expense ot the operation. The actual
course adopted has, of course, been precisely the oppcsite of
the one suggested. The city authorities were partly unable
and partly unwilling to take oue single step Eor the purpose
of preparing the street system of the neighborhood for the
additional demands which would be made upon it. They
allowed seven years to pass, during which the valne of real
estate thereabouts increased by leaps and bounds, and when
finally they tried on the eve of the opening of the station,
means to widen one street between Seventh avenue and
Greeley Square, the cost had become so great that they
shrank from the undertaking. Moreover, such a widening
would necessarily have been an extravagant procedure, both
for the city and the individual property owners. The city
would bave been obliged to purchase the needed twenty feet
on each side of the street at a high price without obtaining
any compensation from the increased value of the remain¬
der of the street. At the same time, the residue of the lot
not in the hands of the individual property-owners, would
have been so reduced in size that it could not bave been
used to the best economical advantage. In this way every¬
body would have suffered by the process of appropriation.
The city would have paid top prices, and obtained the mini¬
mum of benefit. Individual property-owners would have
been left with mutilated and comparatively useless lots on
their hands. And the total expense would have been huge.
Ou the other hand, the action of the Pennsylvania Company
shows how a much better result could have been accom¬
plished at a much smaller expense. In planning for a new
street frOm Thirty-third to Thirty-fourth atreet, it paid indi¬
vidual property-owners good prices, while real estate was
comparatively cheap. It reaped the advantage of the sub¬
sequent increase of value, and can now throw away 16,000
square feet of space, and improve the accessibility of the
station with but slight, if any, cost to itself.
IT is a singular fact that retail merchants have not aa yet
shown auy sufficient appreciation of the advantage of
securing locations in the Immediate vicinity of the Pennsyl¬
vania station. The real estate on all the avenues and streets
leading towards the Terminal has, of course, long been held
by speculators. They have been asking prices which may
bave looked stiff to a retail firm which had no means of
estimating the probable future value of a location near the
station; and the consequnce has been that only two or three
leases or purchases have as yet been reported on the part
of the class of people who will eventually use the property.
Yet nothing is more certain than that ultimately retail flrms
will have to pay higher prices for the property they need
than those hitherto demanded by the speculators. There can
be no doubt tbat the streets and avenues immediately in the
vicinity of the station and leading directly thereto will con¬
tain as good sites for retail stores of a certain kind as any
which can be found in Manhattan, Seventh avenue between
Forty-second and Thirty-fourth streets will be better adapted
to retail trade than is Forty-secoud street between Broadway
aud the Grand Central Station. The side streets between the
Terminal and Greeley Square will lead from a square that
will become the most important centre of business in the
middle region of Manhattan to the largest railroad station iu
the largest city in America. There is no telling, conse¬
quently, bow high the values of well-situated real estate near
the station may climb. It will not be until somewhere be¬
tween flve and ten years after the station is opened that the
final level of values will be reached, because it will take at
least that much time to develop the traffic in Long Island
tributary to the station, and to develop, also, the business
advantages of Greeley Square and its neighborhood. The
celerity of this development will depend partly upon the
date on which the Public Service Commission will allow the
city to bave the benefit of a lower West Side Subway, But
although the ultimate level of values will come slowly it will
undoubtedly be, when it does come, as high as anything else
of the same kind to be found in Maahattan. The dominant
characteristic of tbe real estate development of Manhattan
during the past five years has been the gradual appreciation
of the most advantageous retail sites in the Borough by
business men who needed them, and at hitherto unprece¬
dented prices for that class of property. The explanation of
this movement is that the Middle District of Manhattan is
uow assuming a comparatively flxed distribution of business
usage. The retail trade will not continue to creep uptown
as it has done hitherto. It will be held to its present loca¬
tions by the need of remaining accessible to the millions of
people living on Long Island and New Jersey. But in this
process of appropriation the streets leading to the Pennsyl¬
vania station have hitherto been neglected and their gradual
appropriation for business purposes and at record prices will
be one of the most conspicuous facts of the real estate mar¬
ket during the next year or two.
THE Record and Gnide pointed out last week that Broad¬
way, west of Central Park, was violating real estate
precedents in Manhattan, because it was destined to be au
important business thoroughfare, while at the same time re¬
maining the site of the largest and most expensive apartment
houses on the West Side. It should be remarked also that
Park avenue to the east of Central Park, is also violating a
rea! estate precedent in Manhattan—the precedent which bas
prevented an avenue from being desirable for a combination
of expensive private residences and apartment houses. Of
course, there are thoroughfares like Madison avenue, which
are lined for a part of their distance both with handsome
dwellings and with fine apartments; but in this and in other
similar instances what is really taking place is a process of
substitution. Madison avenue is merely changing from a resi¬
dence to an apartment house thoroughfare, and if a con¬
flagration were to destroy the existing buildings thereon,