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May 6, 1911.
RECORD AND GUIDE
837
DEvbTEBpf^lESTflJE.BuiLDIffe A;F^G}frrEemJRE,K0USQl01DDEeaElATK)ll,
Bifsn/ESs AffoTiiEMES OF GEjto^L IMtefiesi^
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communications should he addressed to
C. W. SWEET
"Published EVery Saturday
By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE
Vice-Pres. fi Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER
Nos. 11 to 15 East 34th Street, New Tork City
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to WSS.)
"Entered at the Post Office at New York, ,V. Y.. as second-class matter."
Copyrighted, 1911, by The Record & Guida Co.
Vol. LXXXVL
MAY 6, 1911.
No. 2251
DESTINY OF PARK AVENUE.
ONE of the most encouraging aspects of the real estate
market recently has been the unceasing interest in
apartment house coustruction. A number of large plots
have heen sold for improvement on Washington Heights
aud its neighhorhood. Several builders and operators are
actively engaged in accumulating sites for improvement on
the side streets west of Central Park. Finally, there are signs
of renewed interest in similar construction on the East Side.
A peculiar instance of this kind has been the purchase of a
plot in 40th street near Park avenue as the site of a new
apartment house. This particular neighborhood is undoubt¬
edly one of the pleasantest and most convenient residential
districts in Manhattan, and it has of late years rather in¬
creased than diminished its popularity in this respect.
Nevertheless, it looks like a doubtful place in which to
invest several hundred thousand dollars in a fireproof apart¬
ment house. It seems inevitable that Parli avenue from
42d street soutli will within a decade be swallowed up by
business after the New York Central has finished its Ter¬
minal. Park avenue will be a thoroughfare aud a noisy one
at that. Business is pushing up from the south and over
from the west. The life of an apartment house in such a
neighborhood wil! be limited to only a few years. There¬
after it might be turned into a hotel, if planned with that
contingency in mind, but a small hotel is rarely a profitable
enterprise in New York. The purchasers of the plot on 40th
street should consider carefully the probable status of their
investment in 1921.
DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION.
THE last issue of thePecord aud Guide contained a very
interesting map of the possible distribution of population
in New York thirty years from now. The map showed the
existing districts of population in the flve boroughs, which
varied between 166 per acre in Manhattan and 36 per acre
iu Brooklyn to 4 per acre iu Queens and 2 per acre in Rich¬
mond. At the prevailing rate of increase in the different
Boroughs there will be added over 4,800,000 inhabitants
to the city during the next thirty-years, and of these Man¬
hattan would get 955,000, the Bronx 1,370,000, Brooklyn
1,737,000, Queens 737,000 and Pichmoud 33,000. In that
case the total population of Manhattan would be about
3,300,000, 234 inhabitants to the acre; of Brooklyn 3,371,-
000 or 75 to the acre; of the Bronx 1,881,000 or 69 to the
acre; of Queens 1,121,000 or 15 to the acre; and of Rich¬
mond 119,000 or 3^ to the acre. Obviously however, there
will be hereafter a very decided change in the rates of in¬
crease in the several Boroughs. After another fifteen years
the population of Manhattan may well become stationary,
if indeed it does not begin to diminish, and both B'rooklyu
and Queens are likely to gain not only at the expense of Man¬
hattan but also at the expense of the Bronx. But whatever
changes are likely to take place the transit policy of the
city should undoubtedly be deliberately to favor a uniform
distribution of population. The great object of the city
government in this respect should, both for economic and
social reasons, be to obtain for the inhabitants of the city
a maximum of light, air and space for a given expenditure
in rent, and undoubtedly one of the greatest advantages of
the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company's proposal is that it
would accelerate the process of distributing the increasing
population of New York more evenly. Of course it would
be of much greater beneflt to Brooklyn than it would either
to the Bronx or Queens, but it would make a good beginning
in those two Boroughs and it holds out hopes even for Rich¬
mond. It is a fair guess that thirty years from now the
population of Manhattan will not be much more than 2,700,-
000, th£\t the population of the Bronx will be about 1,800,000
that the population of Brooklyn wili be about 3,000,000
and that the population of Queens will be about 2,000,000.
Whatever increase Richmond may make will have to come
off these totals, but eveu with a tunnel under the Narrows
the growth of Richmond will be slow compared to that of
tlie more accessible Boroughs.
SUBWAY NEGOTIATIONS.
AT the present writing it looks as if the subway decision
would be favorable to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit
Company, and so far as the comparative claims of the two
competing corporations have been made public, the Brooklyn
Company's proposal is undoubtedly more favorable to
tho city. The proposition of the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company will give the city morei rapid transit
for its money than any proposition which has yet been made.
It includes all the new construction proposed by the Inter¬
borough Company, and it adds these to certain desirable ad¬
ditional lines iu Brooklyn and Queens and the extremely de¬
sirable Broadway-Seventh avenue line in Manhattan, The
city will have to put up more money; but it will get a good
deal more rapid transit. The advantage of all transfers be¬
tween the new Subways and the old Subway would be great¬
er to the travelling public than the free transfers, which
will be obtaiued under the offer of the Brooklyn Company,
but this difference, considerable as it is, is not worth the
price demanded by the Interborough Company. Up to date
that corporation has as usual botched its business and
alienated public sympathy. In case it recedes from its posi¬
tion and will permit the granting of the Broadway-Seventh
avenue route to the Brooklyn Company, the Record and Guide
would still favor the grant to it of the remaining Subway
extensions, but in the matter of that requirement there can
be no compromise,
THE INTERBOROUGH FOREWARNED.
ONE cannot help wondering whether the Interborough
Company fully realises the inevitable consequences oE
allowing the Brooklyn Company to capture the new Subways,
Such an outcome of the present negotiation would mean
practically that in the case of all future extensions the city
would have a plain interest in favoring its new tenant. The
new system would be absolutely under municipal control
and would be a source of proflt, and the city would be ob¬
livious to its own interest in case its paramount object did
not become the strengthening of the new group of Subways.
The result will be that as soon as the Subways now planned
are in profitable operation a West Side subway probably on
Seventh aveuue and Eighth avenue will assuredly be laid
out. Little by little the whole of the Interborough system
will be paralleled until it will become a comparatively unim¬
portant factor in the Metropolitan rapid transit situation.
Every additional line, connecting as it would with a much
larger system of Subways, would be preferred by the public,
wherever there is any competition to a line of the Inter¬
borough Company, and iu the long run it would be completely
isolated and its traffic actually reduced. If, for instance, the
proposed contract is made with the Brooklyn Company, the
city would be unwise to allow the Interborough Company
to make any improvements to the elevated roads. Third
tracks on these roads would be only makeshifts and would
be of little permanent benefit. They would none the less
have serious disadvantages from the point of view of a new
rapid transit system under complete municipal control. The
franchises would be perpetual; the returns to the city very
small; and yet their granting would tend to diminish the
traffic on the new system of Subways. For these reasons
the city would be foolish to enter into any such arrangement
with the Interborough Company. The only part of this ar¬
rangement which should be allowed to go through is the
operation of the Belmont tunnel to Queens. Thus, should
the Brooklyn Company get the contract, the luterborough
Company would have a few years of great prospects until
competition begins, then a few years of stationary t)usiuess,
and finally, after a comprehensive city system had been
completed, a series of years in which it would steadily lose
ground. The ultimate result might be that it would be com¬
pelled to surrender its lines to the city at a fair contem¬
porary valuation in order to avoid further loss.