crown CU Home > Libraries Home
[x] Close window

Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Use your browser's Print function to print these pages.

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 73, no. 1883: April 16, 1904

Real Estate Record page image for page ldpd_7031148_033_00000953

Text version:

Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view About OCR text.
■April 16, 1904. RECORD AND GUIDi: ESTABUSHED "W tfWPH BV iJetjIlD P RfA,L ESTAJE. BuiLDIf/G ApCt^fTECTUI^ .HoUSOlOLD DEQOtMlDH, Basufess Alto Themes Of GETiER^. iK^ERfs^i PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS Published every ^atardag Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET. 14-16 Vesey Street. New Yorfe S. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager Telephone, Cortlandt 8157 ""Mitiered »( (he Post Office at New Tork. N. Y.. na aecon^claes TnaJtor." Vol. LXXin, APRIL 16, 1904. No, 1883. of dealing in it. The outside investor, w.ho pays commissions and does not personally take care of iL, flnds it a much less remunerative form of investment than does the local and pro¬ fessional dealer. A great deal of excellent buying still con¬ tinues to be consummated by large business concerns. Last week it was the United States Express Company which bought on Trinity place. This week it is announced that the New York Life has ,been buying a site back of its present building as a twelve-story workshop for its clerks. Thus the tide of expan¬ sion shows few signs of ebbing,-and it it is one section of the city or one kind of property, it is another. Yet all this is being accomplished, not after the completion of a great group of transit improvements, but in advance thereof. It may be im¬ agined what there will be still to come. The Quarterly. The first Record & Guide Quarterly for 1004 will be ready for delivery on Wednesday. This publication includes all the convey¬ ances, mortgages, projected buildings, alterations, auction sales and leases, arranged alphabelically and numerically, recorded from January 1 to March .^1, 11)04. Price, %G; yearly subscrip¬ tion, $20. THE Stock Market has heen dull and hesitating for the great¬ er part of the past week. The operators who bought stocks dui-ing the preceeding week have either been slowly sell¬ ing them or have been waiting to receive support in continu¬ ing the movement toward a higher range of values. This sup¬ port has not been forthcoming and brokers are again complain¬ ing about the lack of business. The truth is that while prices still continue to be below values, there are many reasons why the recovery should be slow. The iron and steel business, for instance, although it is recovering from the extreme depression Jf December and January, is by no means in a thoroughly whole¬ some state. At best it can look forward during the coming year to nothing more than moderate activity in certain lines. The railroads are still out of the market and will not resume very much buying until they can raise money more easily. Railroad earnings are decreasing very generally. The decrease is not sufficient to cause much alarm, but it does not encourage buying. General trade is no more than fair, and has a down¬ ward rather than an upward tendency. All this is merely part of a^process of gradual readjustment, but while it is taking place there is not room for a very considerable bullish speculation. The general trend of prices will be upwards, but there will be many weeks of dullness and recession sueh as the week now ended. SfTi HE number of conveyances of Manhattan and Bronx prop- • erty recorded during March of the present year was 1,859 against only 1.495 for the March of the preceding year. This constitutes an increase of about 20 per cent, in one year, which is unprecedented. The number of conveyances recorded during the first week in April was almost 50 per cent, greater than the number during the corresponding week in 1903. In Brooklyn the average increase is still greater and runs nearer thirty than twenty per cent. The number of sales reported in this issue of the Record and Guide is double the number reported in the corresponding week of last year. These flgures tell the story of the current real estate market better than any amount of speciflc description—particularly when there is also to be con¬ sidered tbe many causes which are making against activity in the New York real estate and building market. It should also be remarked that the plans flled for new- buildings to be erected during the coming season in Manhattan and the Bronx call for the expenditure of just as much money as did the plans filed during the corresponding period of 1903. Thus, the decrease of business which was noted during January, and to a small ex¬ tent in February, has been wiped out; and since business is stilt increasing, it may be expected that the margin will soon be .credited to the prospective work of 1904. Moreover, the buying is improving in quality. In the early months of the year the small number of private dwellings purchased was a matter of much unfavorable comment. In the past week 35 dwellings were sold against only 29 a year ago. Of course, the bulk of the increase is still confined chiefly to flat and tenement house property, but this is as it should be, for this class of property is the one which has been most beneflted by the events of the past year. It is not to be expected that much outside capital will be in¬ vested in these buildings, because under existing conditions they can best be owned and managed hy small purchasers, resident in the locality, or by operators, who make a business THE plea, which Mr. N. Poulson made before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, on Friday, for immediate ac¬ tion upon the important matter «f improving the present service on the Brooklyn Bridge, is worth the most careful consideration. For years past the service offered by the Bridge to the residents of Brooklyn has been acknowledged to be not only a source of the harrassing inconvenience to many thousands of people, but really dangerous to public safety. Yet one administration and one Bridge Commissioner follows an¬ other without succeeding in accomplishing anything. The dif- flculty seems to be that the improvement of the service at the Manhattan terminal is complicated by other important questions, such as the proper distribution and collection of the passengers, and some provision for effecting the convenient transfer of traffic between the Bridge, the elevated roads and the subway. The Bridge terminal question alone has been dealt with in a somewhat half-hearted manner, pending the satisfactory solution of the larger problem. What Mr. Poulson urges is that the Bridge terminal service should be divorced from the complicated and expensive business of a general terminal and transfer sta¬ tion, and should be treated as an emergency question to be solved without further delay. He admits that if the satisfactory improvement of the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge as a terminal should interfere with the ultimate arrangements for the proper collection, distilbution and exchange of the trafflc con¬ centrating at that point, the lesser matter should be postponed; but he claims that the capacity of the terminal could be greatly increased without interfering with any completely satisfactory solution of the local trafflc problem. Whether or not this claim is valid, is, of course, a technical question which can be settled only by engineers; but if it is valid, there can be no doubt that Mr. Poulson's view of the best mode of procedure is correct. The most important and pressing of all transit improvements which, if posible, should obtain precedence over all other im¬ provements, is that of the terminal facilities at the Manhattan end of the Bridge. AS is well known, Mr. Poulson has a plan of his own for the improvement of the Manhattan terminal which, if it will accomplish all that he claims, should be immediately placed in commission. The object o^ this plan is to improve the switching machinery of the terminal, which is wasteful and inefficient, and which, as Mr, Poulson believes, could be doubled in capacity, and at the same time to increase the number of platforms. These platforms can be arranged so that the terminal can contain at one time eight, five or six-car trains, four on the ground floor and four on the upper floor, so that the amount of platform space can be increased by eight times, so that each train can, if necessary, stop eight times as long as it does at present for loading and unloading, and so that the incoming and outgoing passengers will be separated. As the switching capacity would be doubled, there would be nothing to prevent running at least twenty per cent, more trains an hour, and as the trains could contain six instead of flve cars, a further increase of twenty per cent, in the service could be provided. This increased service would be suflieient to relieve the congestion directly on the ele¬ vated cars and indirectly on the trolley cars. The trolley service is, of course, limited hy the capacity of the bridge, and not like the elevated, by the switching capacity of the terminal; but it can he gi-eatly improved, first by reducing the number of pas¬ sengers using the service, and, second, by the abolition of the loop system. In the place of the loop the trolley cars could be unloaded on the north side of the bridge.and the cars switched to the south side in order to be loaded again. Whether or not this plan is feasible is a technical question which must be left to the engineers; but if it is feasible and can be carried out without any interference with trafiic, it presents so many advantages that it should be made a part of the general scheme of bridge ter¬ minal improvements. There is no conflict between it and tbe