Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 33, no. 837: March 29, 1884

Text version:

March 29 1S84 The Record and Guide. 813 THE RECORD AND GUIDE. Published every Saturday. 191 Broadway, N. Y. TERMS; ONE VBAR, iD advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T, LINDSEY, Business Manager. MARCH 39, 1884. Bualness is beginning to improve as the Fipring advances. All or nearly all the omens are auspicious. Wheat is falling in price and will continue to do so until it can be exported to Liverpool at a profit; tbat is one good signs. The West-bound freights are increas¬ ing, due to a better demand for goods at the West and South; that is another good sign, A very active demand has sprung up for im¬ proved real estate, which is the best sign of all. The spring is now fairly under way, the planting season is all that could be desired, money is very easy, emigration is large and good securities at pres¬ ent prices are tempting to investors. Who knows but what we may be happy yet ? The same day that Minister Sargent was transferred from Berlin to St. Petersburg the President sent an urgent message to Congress to vote for seven more iron-clad vessels for our navy, finish the monitors and get the plant for casting great guns for our navy and our coast defences. Of course there is no connection between the w^ithdrawal of Sargent and the recommendation to increase the navy. Ob, no! Why don't the Congressional revenue ref ormers take a leaf out of the tactics of the municipal reformers at Albany, and, instead of introducing one bill, bring ina dozen or more, each effecting special iateresfcs. Ib ia notable tbafc a general change has rarely been made in our tariff, never indeed except when the war opened and the Siuthern S^riabora aod Representatives left their seats in Con gress. The tariff has been often amended, but every bill effecting all interests has been either killed or so emasculated as not to be of any value aa a reform measure. A few years wiil transform the Fourth avenue between Union square and the Park Avenue Hotel. Tlie Florence apartment house ie to be extended so a^ to take in the whole block between Eigh¬ teenth aad Nineteenth streets. Then a new lyceum is to be con¬ structed adjoining the Academy of Design, Thia will be a building of some architectural pretension. Then the Kiralfy Brothers have their plans prepxred for coastructing a theatre for spectacular pixrpoios, adjoining tho Belvedere Hotel, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, and another great improvement is spoken of at length elsewhere, which involves a magnificent fire-proof structure which will take up all the block now occupied by the Madison Square G-arJea, save along the front on Madison avenue, which is to be occupied by an immense apartment house. This great hall will furnish accommodations for horse shows, circuses, fairs, floral exhibitions, walking matches and great public meetings. Of course other large enterprises will naturally follow. Restaurants will be needed, and other pleasure resorts wili spring up so that the Fourth avenue may in time be somewhat like Fourteenth street between Third avenue and Broadway, thronged witb places of amusement and refreshment. In times past. Fourth avenue prop¬ erty was held in high Odfceeoi, but it failed to realize expectations as it did not prove a good business street, and was unsuitable for dwellings. But hereafter there can be no doubt as to the estimation in wbich real estate on this avenue will be held. Herbert Spencer declines to become a candidate for member of Parliament, because he thinks the sphere of government should be limited to seeing that justice was done between men and men. In his letter declining the nomination he says : " That which I hold to be the chief business of legislation—an administration of justice, such as shall secure to each person, witb certainty and without cost, tbe maintenance of his equitable claims—ia a business to which little attention is paid ; while attention is absorbed in doing things which I hold should not be done at all." But what would our lawyers do if Herbert Spencer's ideal government were estab- liehed? Their business ia to live by litigation, to profit by the dis¬ honesty of men. Our great and costly lawsuits are not only a denial of justice, but are a distinct sanction by government of de¬ liberate plunder. The Stock and other Exchanges can settle mone y disputes of groat magnitude for the merest trifle, but under the forms ef our courts estates are swallowed up; our Surrogates Courts are the headquarters of ghouls, whose business it is to de¬ vour the substance of every dead man's estate ; our most eminent counsel are those who are paid the most excessive and monstrous bills. Herbert Spencer is right. Justice should be certain and without cost. In this country it is uncertain and terribly dear, and results generally in injustice, aud the worst of it is that it is from this plundering caste we"talie all our rulers. Every possible presi¬ dential nominee is a lawyer. Another point is worth noting. In England men like John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Frederio Harrison, John Morley and other lights in literature and science are asked to become members of Parliament; we bestow no such distinctions upon our Emorsons or our Longfellows. Tennyson is made a peer in England ; our greatest poet, Poe, died in a gutter. But, when distinction is to be bestowed, it is always the lawyers ; it is never tbe scientist or tbe man of letters. The demand for silver dollars is. of course, due to the wearing out of the one and two-dollar bills, and the refusal so far of Con¬ gress to pass an appropriation for printing more of them. There would never have been any accumulation of tlie standard dollars in the Treasury were it not for these oue and two-dollar green¬ backs. The law organizing the nationpl banks provided that when resumption took place no issues should be allowed lower than five dollars. Accordingly, on January 1, 1879, the national banks withdrew their one and two-dollar bills. The then Secretary of tbe Treasury, John Sherman, was opposed to silver coinage, and, to discredit it, issued one and two-dollar greenbacks in the place of the national bank notes withdrawn. All the channels of retail trade were thus gorged with small bills, and of course the standard dollars could not circulate. This has supplied all the "fool " news¬ papers with a standing argument against the silver dollar as to its inutility, and the positive objection of the American people to using it. We now see they are iu demand immediately the one and two-dollar bills are beiug retired. If Congress had only sense enough to decree tbat after a certain date all the paper five-dollar bills should be withdrawn, and that at some subsequent date the tens, both greenbacks and nationil bank notes, should be no longer issued, we would then have a gold and silver currency similar to France, Germany and the other leading commercial nations. With gold eaglfs, half eagles and quarter eagles, as well as plenty of silver iu circulation among the people, gold would not so readily leave our shores. It is now piled up in the banks in the form of double eagles, ready for exportation. As gold has one more use in other countries than in the United States—thafc is, as a currency —it naturally gravitates to the countries which most need it. There neei be no contraction of the paper money, for the fives and tens withdrawn could be reissued in larger denominations. It will be remembered tbat iu England the smallest paper issue is a twenty-five-dollar note, and gold circulates very freely among the people in that country. Sherred Hall. Architecture is running so much to "palatial magnificence,' and the dibtinction between art and luxury ts so extensivoly lost sight of, that it is especially interesting to see an artistic use made of simple materials and a plain treatment. This attraction Sherred Hall has to offer. Ifc ia the firat of the series of buildings designed by Mr. Haight for fche General Theo¬ logical Seminary, and destined ultimately to form a double quadrangle on the square bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues, Twentieth and Twenty-first streets. The general scheme we described in tbese columns some montha ago, and Sherred Hall is all tbat has thus far been done towards realizing it, although the funds are now available for the library at the corner of Ninth avenue and Twenty-first street. Tbis is to be connected by a dormitory building with Sherred Hall, which stands some distance down Twenty-first street. The ends of the new building show preparations for extensions on both sides. Sherred Hall itself is about 80 feet long by 30 wide and three stories high, with a roof of rather steep pitch, tbe ridge parallel to tbe street upon which one side of the building directly abuts. The street front is a wall of common hard brick, chosen for color, and laid apparently in cement, upon a foundation of the same slightly reddish sandstone which is employed in the wrought work and in the lintels, arches and mullions of tbe windows. This front is divided into three parts by the slight projection of the cen¬ tre, which ie gabled, with two small square openings iu the stone basement and in the brick first story, a triple opening, witb a eim- pje tracery, in the second afcory and in the third a pointed window with perpendicular tracery in the head. On each side there are two pairs of openings in each story, pointed arches in brickwork in the first, a slight but effective contrast of color being obtained by the use of brick of more pronounceu red in the jamba, aud above