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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 33, no. 831: February 16, 1884

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February 16, 1884 The Record and Guide, 153 THE RECORD AND GUIDE. Published every Saturday. 191 Broadwray, N. Y. TERMS: ONE TEAR, iD advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communicatioos should be addressed to €, W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. UNDSEY, Business Manager. FEBRUARY 16, 1884. There ia no sense in the raid on the so-called bucket ehopa. What would kill them effectually would be to allow dealings in ten share lots, as on the London Stock Exchange. If this were done the business of the Stock Exchange would at once be largely augmented. -------------9---------:---- The Cotton Exchange now permits its brokers to make what terms they please in the way of commissions and interest with their customers. Why not free trade at all the exchanges ? The Stock Exchange brokers are complaining at the absence of the public from their offices. May it not be that the outsiders think $85 too large a commission for buying and selling a hundred shares of stock, and regard it as extortion when asked to pay 6 per cent. for the loan of money when the brokers borrow it for 2 per cent,? For years past The Record and Guide has been advocating responsible local government. We hava shown time and again that there was no hope for the reform of our local government ualess the Mayor had authority to appoint and dismiss heads of departments without reference to the Board of Aldermen. We have shown that the source of nearly all our governmental woes was the unchecked authority of irresponsible legislators and Boards of Aldermen, and that the proper corrective was an exalta¬ tion of executive powers so that the public would know whom to blame if things went wrong. The programme so long ago outlined in this paper has worked well in Brooklyn, and an attempt is now earnestly making to confer upon the Mayor of New York the same authority which was given to the Mayor of Brooklyn. It may fail this session, but it will certainly succeed next year, as it is the only way out of our municipal troubles. It is gratifying to note that an influential section of the daily press has come round to our view of this matter, and the meeting at Cooper Union on Thursday night shows that our best citizens are all agreed as to the desirability of withdrawing the confirming power from the Board of Aldermen. Of course some check should be put upon the Mayor. If tyrannical and corrupt, the Governor might be given power to interfere, but the present system is simply intolerable. We say aye to Mr. Eoaevelt's amendments to the charter. The bi-metallists would probably be quite willing to agree to the 8toppaf;e of the coinage of the silver dollar if Senator McPherson's financial measure was endorsed by Congress. The aim of that bill is to utilize all the gold and silver bullion of the coantry for cur¬ rency purposes. Bars of gold or silver could, under the proposed enactment, be taken to the mints and stamped, and certificates issued representmg their money value; but the certificates are not to be issued in excess of five million per month. The dispatch summarizing this bill in the daily papers was made by some ignorant press agent and is very confusing, for he speaks of dollars when he means bars, and while he gives the fineness and weight of the gold dollar he does not tell what ratio it shall bear to the silver also to be stamped. This is, of course, the vital matter at issue. If the bullion is stamped at the same ratio that now exists between the American gold and the standard silver dollar, the silver men and bi-metallists will not object. Should this bill pass we will have the most perfect currency on earth, for every certifi¬ cate ijsued will represent the amount on its face of actual gold and silver in the Treasury. There will then be no need for national bank bills, or for making any provision for continuing them, in view of the absolutely perfect currency, representing gold and sil¬ ver, whicii will in time replace them. A national bank bill rep¬ resents credits mainly; first that of the bank which issues them, then that of the government whose evidences of debt insure the ulti¬ mate redemption. But we fear Senator McPherson's bill is too sensible a measure to pass. Already some of the singularly misin¬ formed writers of the New York press are talking of these bullion certificates as being a paper inflation, to wliich they Iiave no more resemblance than a warehouse receipt or a ticket to a place of .amusement. Terra Cotta in Architecture. A visit to the works of the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company is of extreme interest to all students of architecture. It is of espe¬ cial interest as showing, young as the industry is in this country, how far the enterprise and skill of the manufacturers have outrun the ability of the designers, and how far the capabilities of the mate¬ rial are in advance of the power of the architects to make a good use of it. In sculptural decoration the museum of the works is of high artistic interest. This it owes mainly to the work of Mr. Mora, an artist iu decorative sculpture of the most thorough Italian training and of the very first rank. His most successful works hitherto have been the quaint and charming reliefs in the panels in front of the Metropolitan Opera House. These cannot be in the least appre¬ ciated in their places. The grace and freedom even of the general composition can hardly be perceived, while the skill and expres¬ siveness of the modelling of detail are entirely thrrjwn away upon the spectator. The best impression of these beautiful works which the public has had'a chance of receiving is that given by the admir¬ able engravings ot them published in the November number of Harper's Magazine. But even these do not do the original com¬ plete justice, aa one sees when he finds in the collection at Perth Amboy duplicates, which have been injured in firing, of one or two of the panels. One or two of Mr. Mora's assistants are only inferior to him in decorative work, although the works to which we have referred are really works too ideal to come within the category of decorative sculpture. A mantelpiece, designed for one of the stations of the Pennsylvania Railroad, now in the modelling room, is an exquisite piece of decoration in Italian Renaissance, the delicacy of which would be destroyed if it were to be cut in sand¬ stone by an ordinary, or even an extraordinary, workman, but being fixed by baking as it is modelled it is sure of retaining the grace of detail which nothing but the actual handiwork of the artist can give. This is the greiit advantage of decoration in terra cotta. The range of its application in architecture is immense. Its limitations, although rigid, are not numerous. The capabilities and the limita¬ tions have both been pointed out with justice and intelligence by the author of two articles in the London Builder, but it does not seem that either the capabilities or the limitations have been at all appreciated by the great number of architects who have introduced it in their work. In the huge Produce Exchange, the most im¬ portant work thus far done here in terra cotta, the capacities of the material are both negatively and positively disregarded. We think we are within bounds in saying that, with the exception of the slabs that cover the girders over the basement and which, to the eye, are absolutely unaccountable, there is not from top to bottom, or from end to end, a detail which is designed for its material, one from which in a drawing or a photograph the specta¬ tors could confidently pronounce that it was made of baked clay. This is what we call a negative disregard of the properties of the material, a failure to secure its advantages by a characteristic treatment. Of a positive disregard the huge cornice is an example. A cornice of great projection can be made of shelves of stone over¬ lapping ea,ch|other,"and cannot be made of pieces of baked clay, though it may be imitated by hanging pieces of baked clay over the outer walls on poles or iron cantilevers. This is really the most important restriction in tbe use of terra cotta, and this is defied in the Produce Exchange by a cornice of terra cotta which would be gross in stone. The design is a design for brick and stone, not translated into terra cotta, but merely imitated in terra cotta. The restrictions of terra cotta arise from the processes of its preparation. The size of the pieces is limited by the necessity of thorough and equal firing, and their shape and employment by the liability to shrinkage and to torsion. These amount to one thing, the liability to unequal shrinkage, by which distortion is produced. The shrinkage in the bulk of the wet clay, which is modelled by hand or pressed in the mould, to the [baked clay which comes out of the kiln, is roughly put at one-twelfth. Most of this takes place in the drying-room before the clay goes into the kiln, but there is contractibility enough left to constitute a liability to slight deformations and deflections of line. It follows i;that continuous straight lines should be avoided in large pieces of terra cotta. Bub nothing is commoner in designs meant to be executed in terra cotta than long, straight and narrow' mouldings by which' the designer so far show-i his ignorance of his material as to provide a measure by which its deviations, trifling in themselves, may be estimated and exagger¬ ated. When mouldings of high and complicated profiles are employed, it is desirable, evidently, to subdivide them horizontally into small sections, in each of wliich the shrinkage is inconsider¬ able. It is better still toavoid them, and to interrupt tbe mouldings 60 .13 to make them recurrent instead of continuous. This is exem¬ plified very effectively in the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, in Philadelphia, a building in whioh the treatment of the material is uniformly, though not invariably, admirable, by