Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 63, no. 1624: April 29, 1899

Text version:

April 29, 1899. Kccord and Guidt 761 BiTsiWEas jutoltEVES or CE^la)^ iKiot^l. PR1C£ PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS JPublisbed every Saturday. Tblbfhoio, Costlahdt 1370. CoicmunlcatloiLS should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-10 Vesey Street. J. 2. LfNVb BT, Business Manager. " Entered al the Post-O^ice al New Iork, N. y., aa second-class matter." Vol. LXIII. APRIL 29, 1899. No. 1,624. WITH SUPPLEMENTS, THE prominent features of the stock market are speculative manipulation and uncertainty in regard to the future of money, with the probabilities pointing rather to higher than lower rates. It is noticeable that, despite the work done on the bull side and the great help afforded tO' the workers by the dis¬ inclination of holders to part with long stocks, prices are, in the main still below what they were two or three weeks ago,when the first setback of the year came. There is, however, nothing to attract new public buying, except, of course, in the investment issues. In the latter lines there is good wholesome buying, the stocks and bonds of the properties making the best earning state¬ ments being mostly favored, as is natural. In the past it haa been usual for dullness to come upon the stock market when the activity in manufacturing and trading waa most pronounced. Just now the general conditions of business, judging by the pub¬ lished reports, is excellent and promise to be better; therefore, if the old rule still works, this should operate against the stock market until a period is reached when outside business falls oft. ONE of the chief sensations in the financial world across the Atlantic, as on thia, is the sudden rise in the price of sil¬ ver. The only explanation of this rise so far offered is specula¬ tion; but this is not satisfactory. Financial journals and the financial editors of other journals have imbibed a prejudice against silver as a result of their efforts to maintain the gold standard; consequently, silver to their minds is not so much a metal or a commodity as an affair of politics, and being of the politics to which they are opposed they cannot admit that it will move under ordinary trade conditions. If we remove from our minds all thoughts of the monetary controversy, it will not appear at all strange that silver advances when everything else has advanced; it is a valuable metal for which there are many uses, commercial as well as monetary, and it will not be sur¬ prising if it advances still more. "With the growth of business' in the Far East its use as money will increase and large purchases by the Paris Mint, indicate that its value for the same purpose in Europe is increasing rather than diminishing. This idea has nothing whatever to do with the standard of exchange, which may remain gold, while the circulating medium of a particular country is silver. Possibly the readjustment of the finances of Spain will call for large amounts O'f the white metal and explain the French Mint's purchases. At any rate there is no reason in the world why silver should remain the exception to the general movement of prices. Iron, for instance, has advanced materially this year, a fact that is affording considerable satisfaction to the European ironmaster, because it is lessening the American com¬ petition, while the home demands remain quite active. Most flattering reports of the condition of the iron business for the first quarter of the year in Great Britain and on the Continent are published. The programme for railroad building in India contemplates an expenditure of Rx 24,000,000, about ?14,50O,OOO, for the years 1899-1902. Instead of Germany having sanctioned the extension of the Cape-to-Cairo railroad through German East Africa and aubsidized a telegraph line, it appears that Mr. Rhodes only succeeded in arranging a basis for negotiations and the British government is more reluctant than ever to afford guarantees. Thoae who, unable to throw off the effects of the political conflict over the metal, look askance at the advance in silver, will take comfort from tne report of the Rand gold pro¬ duction for the first quarter of the year, which amounted to 1,256,058 ozs., while 937,708 ozs. were produced in the same quar¬ ter of last year, 652,899 ozs. in the corresponding quarter of 1S97 and 489,148 in the same quarter of 1896. The North German Lloyd dispensed about $1,000,000 for dividends in 1898, as against about $500,000 in 1897. It is reported that an agreement has been reached between dealers and agriculturists for the re-estab¬ lishment of the grain exchange at Berlin, and that the matter is in the hands of the Prussian Minister of Agriculture. Evidently, the agrarians do not find it so easy to keep grain prices' always high when speculation is absent, as they once thought it was. There is to be no legislative assembly in Austro-Hungary until late in the ^ear, instead of in the Spring; consequently the coun¬ try will have a spell in which to breathe, before political discus¬ sions begin again to embitter the people and obstruct business. OF the varying winds that blow upon the ship " Rapid Tran¬ sit " and carry it hither and thither, the prevailing one of the moment comes from the East—the Third Avenue Railroad Company is said now to be anxious to build the tunnel even with a franchise limited as to duration. The blow from the Metro¬ politan Street Railway Company seems to have subsided into a dead calm. To the average citizen it will make very little differ¬ ence which company builds, if one must build. The Metropolitan Street Railway Company could give the best system of transfers, but would have the least interest in building the Bronx section. Third Avenue Railroad interests would have an incentive to build as rapidly as possible on both sides of the city—on the West to compete hardest with their rival, the Metropolitan, and on the East to attract population to the network of street rail¬ ways they are buying and building in the Bronx through the Union Railway Company. There is one thing, however, that ought to be mentioned, even though it may dampen the latest hope raised of seeing a rapid transit railroad built in the near future, and that is, that the Third Avenue Railroad Company has so recently paraded itself in company with the greatest o-p- ponents of and obstacle to rapid transit, the Manhattan Elevated Railroad Co., that their sincerity will be open to question until they put their offer into practical shape. On the other hand, it may be that these people have at last come to see, as has heea recently pointed out by a railroad official, that a tunnel road means money in the pocket of whoever builds it. Rapid transit in this city has been such a matter of alternate hope and despair- that settled opinions are impossible. Only this much is prob¬ able, that the advent of the Third Avenue Railroad Company as a bidder for the franchises, would bring back the Metropolitan Street Railway into the field of competition when we would be more likely to see another Kingsbridge road franchise fight,, though on a larger scale, than a practical tunnel through which the resident of Washington Heights could be shot from City HalL in the happy expectation of reaching home in twenty or thirty- minutes, as he should do. TESTS made by the Fire Department at the Manhattan Life Bnilding cn Broadway prove that a high building can Iw as effectively protected against fire as a low one. That protec¬ tion is not a question of height, but of appliances. Ey the con¬ nection of -an engine of the Department standing in the street with the fire apparatus of the building itself, a stream of water was forced 70 feet above the top of the flagstaff, which ia 370 feet above the street level, through a one-and-three-eighths-inch nozzle and also through a one-and-a-quarter-inch nozzle. The building plant, operated by its own engines (stationary), did just as well, besides showing its effectiveness in protecting the several fioors. Certain remarks attributed to the Chief of the Fire Department at the close of this trial may be taken tO' fore¬ shadow the principal recommendation that will emanate from the committee of the Municipal Assembly which is considering the m'atter of the regulations to be made to meet the danger of fire in high buildings. Those remarks were: "So far as the Department is concerned, the tests were entirely satisfactory. They justified my belief that if all of the high buildings were equipped with an efficient standpipe syatem, a fire like that iu the Home Life Building last December would be rendered im¬ possible. If the owners of high buildings will aid us in thia matter, the Department can afford them adeqtiate protection. THE BOWLING 6RELN SITE. No definite progress has been made this -week In the negotia¬ tions for the purchase by the Federal Government, of the pro¬ posed Bowling Green site for the new Custom House. It was reported last week the owners cf fourteen of the sixteen parcels concerned have agreed on terms of sale at private contract. As regards the two parcels, owned by the Cooper estate and E. M. Brown, condemnation proceedings will apparently be necessary; in any event, condemnation proceedings will be required to ex¬ tinguish the city's interest In the alleyway which enters the plot from Bridge street. Under these circumstances it ia of course impossible to say when the purchase will be completed, aa the Government will sign no contracts until it is assured of the entire block. On the other hand, the owners have good reason to facili-