Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 63, no. 1620: April 1, 1899

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April I, 1S99. Record and Guide ^^i^. ONE OF TWO -NEW MANSIONS JUST COMPLETED, No, 4'6 West 7Ja St,, near Central Paik. .\. B. Kight, Architect and Builder. Real Estate Market. Business has been very good, indeed, in the private sales mar¬ ket this ■week. Mercantile and residential, investment and specu¬ lative properties figure with almost equal prominence in our budget of Gossip from brokers' offices. Not only have the vol¬ ume and diversity of the business been all that could be desired, but the week has been productive of a goodly number of individ¬ ual tran,sactIons that have arrested popular attention. Chief among these was the sale of the old Mercury Euilding, at Nos, 3 Park row and 5 Ann street, by the National Life Insurance Com¬ pany of Hartford, to the owners of tlie Park Row Syndicate Euilding. The immediate object of the purchase -was, no doubt, to secure to the Syndicate Bunding a perpetuation of present ton- rtitions of lighc and air. But this by no means Kignifie.s that the Kill' wiil not be rc-improvcd. Indeed, it is said on god aulhtirity that neguiiatioiis arc under way for the lease of a six-story lnuld- tiig which the purchasers will erect as soon as a tenant can bo secured. Another important downtown transaction was the sale, ,by Flake & Dowling, of tho southwest corner of Broadway and .Walker street. The nominal purchaser was Peter J, Merrick, but the real purchaser is said to be a business firm or corporation that will erect a building eleven stories high, part of which it will occupy, itself. There is a frontage in-Broadway of 51.10, and in Wallier street of 127.7. Upon this plot are old dwellings, con¬ verted for business purposes, and now rented oniy from month t • month. The purchaser can, therefore, obtain possession im¬ mediately. Flake & Dowling bought the property in Novemb'er last year from tho estate of William Ross. A conspicuous trans¬ action in uptown mercantile property was tlie sale of the new eight-story business building at Nos. 25S and 260 5th avenue, near 29th street, by Henry Corn, The property is leased for a term of years, which circumstance gives color to the assertion that this week's sale removes it permanently from the speculative market. Edmund Coffin sold the unfinished 13-story hotel, known as the Victoria, at Nos, US and 120 West 34th street. The pur¬ chaser, C. F, Wildey,, will complete the building. Mr. Coffin, who owned the ground and furnished the original builders with a loan to put'up the structure, bought the property back again at fore¬ closure recently. Terence Farley's Sons, who bought part of the former Columbia University site, will improve their purchase by the erection of high-class dwellings. The purchase comprises a plot 121,2 on Madison avenue, and 75 feet on .50th street, and, with recent sales to Dr, White and Minturn Grennell, disposes of the Madison avenue biock front extending back 12,j feet in lllth and soth streets. The purchase by E. H. Van Ingen. from Heni.v O, Havemeyer, of a piot of two lots in 5th avenue, .")0 feet north of S7th street, served to supply one of sevei'a! interesting items rroni_ Millionaires' Mile and a Half, Mr. Van Ingen, last week, pur- cJiased the O. H, P. Belmont site at the south corner of 77tlx street, and already holds the larger part of the block front be¬ tween 71st and 72d streets, Mr. Belmont, in turn, this week bought the lesidence in which he now lives, at No. 677 5th avenue^ between .73d and 54th streets. The house, which was owned by the Elizabeth Coler estate, was occupied by the City Club until a year ago, when Mr. Belmont leased it. The property adjoins the residence of ex-Governor Levi P. Morton. Another purchase in 5th avenue opposite the park was by J, B. Simpson, of a site 25 feet south of 84th street. The effect of Ogden Mills and Ernest Flagg's purchase in 10th avenue, 41st and 42d streets, as a site for model tenements, cannot but be of the very best on the neigh¬ borhood. Among other notable transactions were those affecting mercan¬ tile properties at Houston street and West Broadway, No, 4!jS West Broadway, and Broad and Front streets, a plot of 12 lots at 5th avenue and 102d street, Nos. 5 East 17th and G 18th streets, a lot in Syth street, near 5th avenue, a lot at Madison avenue and 82d street, and the Tower Building, at No, 50 Broadway. Apart from a good budget of sales, the event of the week which is calculated to exercise the greatest influence on the tone of the real estate mai'ket is no doubt the publication of the offer sub¬ mitted by the directors of the Metropolitan Street Railway Com¬ pany to the Rapid Transit Commission. Real estate men ha.il the proposition to construct the road by private capital as tl.c only solution of the rapid transit problem practicable at the present time, although some objections were raised as to the details of the Metropolitan Street Railway's proposition. Of course, opposition to the project of building the road by privat; enterprise may be encountered in the Legislature, when per¬ mission shall be applied for, but this opposition will certainly , not be instigated by real estate men. It is generally con-, ceded that the buiiding of the West Side branch of the roai; would add at least 50 millions of dollars the flrst year t.o-th&- value of real estate on Washington Heights, and in. Dyckman Flats, while fully a thousand small owners of vacant lots, who have bought for that puipoSe during the past few years, stand ready to build hemes for their own occupancy as soon as tlic oft-postponed plan for rapid transit talies definite form. Com¬ pared with iand values in the Bronx, in the territory served by the Third Avenue Elevated Railway, lots on W^ashington Heighta and in Dyckman Flats are very low. Inside Bouievard lols, Irom 145th to 175th street, can be bought at from :f6,CO0 to .'^8,600: from 175th to 190th street, at from ^^4,000 to .'i;4,500. With rapid transit the better situated iand on Wadsv-'orth, llth and Audu¬ bon avenues would undoubtedly come into demand as sites foL' flne fiats or apartment hotels. In Dyckman Flats land can bs bought at an average price of $1,000 per lot, which, with rapid ti-ansit, could hardly fail to go up 300 per cent. An early effect of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company's, proposition was; to bring out an offer from the president of a trust company foi-, the entire holding of the Marx-Ernst-Nathan Syndicate in Ihei Dyckman tract. The chief objection to the Metropolitan Street.* Railway Company's proposition is directed against the clause which provides that the East Side line need not be constructed' before the West Side line pays 5% on its cost, and this objection comes from property-owners in the Bronx. It is urged that this' clause leaves too many loopholes for evasion; and that Brons , Borough, whose population is second only to that of Buffalo and Rochester, outside of the Greater New York, stands moie in need of rapid transit'than the sparsely settled upper end uC Manhattan, Already the line of continuous building develupm"t;iii; extends from 140th street to Trt::mont, except where interruplcd hy the Astoj-, Watson, and some smaller estates, ami rapid transit would carry the-line lo Bronx Park. The atlltude of Bronx property-owners is explaiucd_in a. letter to the Rapid Transit Commi.ssion, signed jointly by Ja-me^L, Wells, presideuL of the North Side Board of Trade, and J. A. "Ooulden, president of the Taxpayers' Alliance. The leiter reads in y'art as follows; "We decidedly object lo the terms proposed in relSt-i^on to the building of that portion of the road which the aforesaid at¬ torneys designate as 'the recond section,' These proposed, terms discriminate most unjustly againsfthe Borough of the Bronx by (jostponing the construction of the road in that portion of ths city indefinitely, or, in their own words, until" 'the net earn¬ ings from the operation of the railroad upon the flrst section shall bo sudiciciit to pay flve per cent, upon the actual ccst of 1