Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 68, no. 1745: August 24, 1901

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August 24, 1901. RECORD AND GUIDE. 233 DEVoTti) TO ReaJ. Zstku . BuiLDij/o Afic^rTECTUi^ JjwaplQiii Diooifnml. BushJess aiJdThemes of GErtoi^. IjftOfaT. PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS Published every Satarday Qotomm^cationa ahould be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New Yort J. T. LINDBET, Buslneas Manager Telepbone, Cortlandt 1370 '-" Entered at the Post Office at New York. N. Y.. as second-class matter." Vol. LXVIII. AUGUST 24,1901. No. 1745. The Record and Guide Quarterly for the three months, April— June, inclusive, is now ready for delivery. All the records arranged for handy reference. One dollar and a half a copy, or five dollars a year. The cheapest and best system of keeping records of real estate— conveyances, mortgages, new buildings, etc., etc. If you would like to see it, send a postal card to the Record and Guide Quarterly, Nos. 14 and 16 Vesey st., City. DURING the week the Stock Market has exhibited consider¬ able strength within somewhat narrow limits, but broad¬ ening and intensifying considerably towards Its close. It looks very much as if preparations are being made to engineer an ad¬ vance with the close of the vacations, with the expectation that the public will be then ready to return to stocks and will come back as buyers. This can only be based upon the idea that the flattering returns of the last fiscal year, which are now coming along in a cheerful stream, will encourage buying and remove the effects of the steel strike and crop damages from the minds of investors and speculators. Between this and October a good ■many company reports will appear and as business generally was so prosperous in the past year, they are sure to be more or less satisfactory to security holders; the injury to business gen¬ erally and particularly to that of the railroads, due to strikes and crop damage, will not have had time to show itself. It is pos¬ sible that a substantial advance in prices may be made in this interval and perhaps continued until winter. But it is also pos¬ sible that the public may return in a cautious temper and un¬ willing to accept the results of the past as a guarantee for the future. They may come back to tbe market sellers instead of buyers; and, if this is so, the calculations of the promoters of higher quotations will be misplaced. It is impossible to think that the strikes,which have been so frequent and widespread this year, involving both large and small industries, have not dis¬ turbed business and materially reduced production; or that the agricultural losses will not lessen the farmers' buying power and the direct and indirect agricultural tonnage of the railroads. In view of this fact it is crediting the public with unusual short¬ sightedness if they are relied upon to return to the market on the long side, A good deal is made of the healtliy pecuniary cir¬ cumstances of the farmer because of the good crops in recent past years, as an offset to his losses. This is equal to saying that a draft upon reserve with which to meet current expenses is as good as paying them from present profits. A MOVEMENT of gold from India, Africa and Australia has given better tone to tlie London money market and re¬ flectively to other European financial centres. The Bank of England, liowever, maintained its I'ate at 3 per cent, and tbe only changes in discount rates are those of Bombay and Calcut¬ ta which have advanced. There is an expectation that Europe must soon ship gold to the United States, but it seems to be based so far entirely upon the mechanical movements of ex¬ change and the fact that Europe is a large buyer of wheat from this country. The actual result depends upon where the most profitable use of money may be made. Then Europe is every year a large buyer of grain from this side, and it remains to be seen whether the increase in wheat purchases this year, may not be offset by smaller takings of other grains. At the moment Europe cannot conveniently spai'e any of its gold, and it fol¬ lows that every effort will be made to hold it. In no quarter can it be said that the commercial situation has improved. All lines of business report dullness where they do not record stag¬ nation and the returns made by the various boards of directors of the results of operations for tbe past half yeai% only increase the general gloom. Take the English railroads for example. In two previous half years dividends declined despite a large aug¬ mentation of gross receipts: in the last half year there was a further shrinkage in receipts with a still larger growth In ex¬ penditures, with the result that the dividends are the lowest de¬ clared in many years. Here we see the results of prices of ma¬ terials, supplies and labor, which were swelled in good times, not having adapted themselves to the new condition of dimin¬ ished business. So far as world-politics effect the situation it is favorably, tbe prices of government bonds being strong though no new advances are to be recorded for the week. Apartment Hotels. THE New York Sun calls attention to the fact that during the first seven months of this year plans were flled with tbe Department of Buildings for twenty-two buildings classed as hotels, and that of these eighteen are to be regarded as flrst- class, costing anywhere from $82,000 to twenty times that amount. It also notes that perhaps as many more hotels are projected, and will in all probability be built some time within the next few years. Furthermore, it finds full justification for this eruption of hotel building in the prosperous condition of the hotel business in New York City at the present time. The truth is that no branch of business in any part of the country has been more stimulated by the prosperity which began to put in its appearance in 1896 than the hotel business in New York. Now and then rich people from al! over the country come actually to live in New York, but almost every American, who has money to spend, pays an increasing tribute to the metro¬ politan hotels. The occasion for such visits are innumerable. Large business enterprises almost necessarily involve a visit to New York once or twice a year. Important social gatherings, such as the horse-show, awaken the interest of all American owners of flue horses. The habit of taking an ejtcursion to New York by well-to-do families for the purpose of buying clothes, and having a good time is continually on the increase. The many people that take ship for Europe every year from this port often pass a week or so in New York at one or both ends of their trip. And the constantly growing number of rich western families tbat have their summer residences in New England rarely miss the opportunity of staying over a few days in the Metropolis en route east or west. In short, nearly all the changes in business conditions and in the manner in which Americans live and enjoy themselves, augment the number of transient vis¬ itors to this city, and the consequences is that in spite of the fact that New York is not visited as London and Paris is by hordes of foreigners, it is accumulating a hotel population quite as large as that of the most important European capitals. Americans are the most restless and mobile people in the world, and New York is the center to which all their movements tend. But there are hotels and hotels. It must be remembered that ■almost all the twenty-two buildings classed by the Department as hotels are really apartment hotels, which in truth do not ca¬ ter to transients at all. They are patronized by comparatively permanent residents of New York. The rooms in these apart¬ ment hotels are for the most part unfurnished; they are divided in two, three, and four room suites; leases run for a whole year; and they are called hotels only because apartments are not pro¬ vided with separate kitchens and house-keeping arrangements. Meals are cooked in a central kitchen, and are served either in a private or in a common dining room. The rental includes the care of the rooms. The apartment hotels consequently is an at¬ tempt to convert a hotel into a place of permanent residence. It is a modernized and improved boarding house, intended for the accommodation of relatively well-to-do people, and giving an amount of privacy to its occupants, which neither the boarding house nor the ordinary hotel can furnish. Its precise parallel does not exist anywhere in the world. It is, perhaps, nearer the type of an English lodging house than au American boarding house, but it is a devolpment of both of these types, and yet is different from either, in that it appeals to a different class of patrons. Even in Paris, the particular home of apartments, nothing like the New York apartment hotel, is to be found, for even the smallet French apartment has a kitcheu closet, rela¬ tively as small as the apartment itself, and the Frenchman when he dines at a restaurant goes out on the Boulevards to find it. The fact is that the causes which are leading to the popular¬ ity of apartment hotels are social rather than economic, as may be gathered from a few well-ascertained facts about the ordi¬ nary character of their inhabitants. Frequently (though by no means universally) it is comparatively childless families that oc¬ cupy the apartments—families in easy circumstances, who like to live an untroubled life, who enjoy going out to places of amusement and restaui'ants, and who are prone frequently to lock up their apartments and to run away on short business or pleasure trips. It fre,quently happens that these families have 1