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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 73, no. 1890: June 4, 1904

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June 4, 1904. RECORD AND GUIDE 1305 they will serve their own financial ends by making lower Fifth avenue the most beautiful and attractive thoroughfare in the city. De/oieD to RmJ. EsTAJt. BinLDif/c AiRcrfrrEtmiRE .KousErioiD DEeotfUDri. Buaitfeas A)toThemes OF GEtta^l iKTtRpat. PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS Pnblisfyed eVery .Saturday Communications should be addrossed to C. ^W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New YorK J, T, LINDSEY. Business Manager Tolephono. Cortlandt 3157 •■Entered at the Post Office a( JVeio York. N. Y., as second-class matler." Vol. LXXni. JUNE 4, 1904. No. 1890 THE Stock Market during the past week has been heavy. deteriorating under persistent dullness that nothing at the present momi-'nt seems to animate with even a prospect of approaching liveliness. Yet the industrial outlook is un¬ doubtedly brighter on the whole than it was a short time ago, and reports go to show that retail trade is receiving a season¬ able stimulus from the advent of warmer weather. The textile markets are better, and the crop outlook, with the possible ex¬ ception of cotton, is apparently satisfactory. Railroad earnings, however, continue to fall off, and the tone of general business is at best one of stolidity. There is nothing buoyant, nothing that indicates any real anticipation of livelier times. Appar- _ ently the most ardent desire of the moment is to maintain pres¬ ent conditions. All of this may possibly be taken to indicate that the speculative elements have been entirely eliminated from the situation. The tremendous impetus which the finan¬ cial and industrial condition of the country received a few years ago has spent its force, and the most likely expectation for the near future is that we shall witness in the commercial world a very slow sagging away from the present level, interrupted pos¬ sibly by temporary conditions that will greatly delay and apparently thwart the process. There are times when "things" (including stocks) have, if we may say so, a preponderance of purchasing power on their side; in other words, they are in de¬ mand. There is a time also when money has the greater call, and apparently, having witnessed a period when the former con¬ dition existed, we are about to enter into a period when the latter condition will be dominant. WHAT the French call "L'Art Public" has only just ar¬ rived in this country as an idea or vague conception. In professional circles and within the confines of a few art organizations the notion and its poESibilities are, of course, well understood, but it is naturally impossible for us to have a pub¬ lic art without a public, and at the present moment in the United States there is very little interest, beyond a good-natured general approval, in any project to reform our cities in the direction of greater beauty. Utility is understood. It can be measured in dollars and cents, but Beauty is a more indefinite asset, and is not so easily to be calculated in concrete terms as to its value. It is much to be hoped, however, that property owners along the line of Fifth avenue, from Madison Square to 42d street, and even further north, could be induced to join hands seriously for the purpose of making this shopping district which is destined to be one of the wealthiest in the world, at the same time one of the most beautiful. This result, of course, cannot be obtained without a measure of co-operation, but after all it needs only a concun'ence as to certain comparatively minor matters in order to attain to a real degree of efficiency. It may be taken for granted, of course, that both sides of this thoroughfare will necessarily be improved, sooner or later, by the erection of modei-n structures, and clearly little beauty of general effect can be obtained if an architectural go-as-you- please is permitted, and brick of many colors and stone of many kinds are jumbled together with a confusion of floor-lines, skyline, cornices, etc. In another part of this paper we print a few interviews with some of the leading architects of this city, and the opinions they have expressed are indicative of the policy which property owners should adopt if they desire to confer upon their part of New York's chief avenue a notable and world-famous reputation. The result can be obtained without any one owner subordinating his financial interests seriously for the benefit of Art—a sacrifice which possibly is not conceivable until our civilization has progressed somewhat further. But the great thing is that with a mild measure of personal suppression Fifth avenue property owners can do so much, and it hardly needs to be pointed put how greatly rietropoHtan Growth Northward. WHEN a man looks at a map of Greater New York, and feflects that it is about fifteen,miles from the Battery to the northern terminus of the Third Avenue Railway, while it is little more than lialf that distance to some of the most hab¬ itable portions of our southern and eastern boroughs, where there is still plenty of room to spare, he may wonder why the growth northward continues to be so rapid. Were it checked for a time under the infiuence of our new municipal expansion it would seem like a perfectly natural event, and, when we do not look below the surface, a check would be an event to oc¬ casion no surprise. But we have seen no evidence of stagnation even temporarily, and there are various reasons why such a misfortune could never happen to the district now known as the Borough of the Bronx. In the first place, a check is not possible because the line of least resistance for a movement of population is so generally along water courses, and that line is so persistently sought when a movement is in progress, that it may be said to go in ac¬ cordance with law. Harlem was a considerable center of pop¬ ulation, and there were thriving villages north of the Harlem River, as far away as Fordham. when the Yorkville district of New York was almost a desert sand hill. This was chiefly due to the fact that swift steamers were plying back and forth between the different landings on the Harlem, and the lower end of Manhattan Island. It took the old stages, finally displaced by equally slow horse cars, two hours or more to go from the Battery to Harlem, and Harlem was the limit of their service. But the steamers could touch at several landings along the river shore, where ideal places for suburban homes could be found, and cover the distance in half the time wasted on the roads. Here was a great gain, and, as a consequence, Harlem and the adjacent villages under the various and now half-forgotten names by which they were known, grew and pros¬ pered. Agriculture, represented finally in truck farming, may have had much to do with the earlier development of the neigh¬ borhood; but had there been no Harlem River and no swiftly paddling "Sylvan Dell." and 'her consort, there might have been a few farm houses and country taverns scattered here and there through the district; but no considerable population would have come until it had blasted and graded its way through all intervening obstacles. Primarily, then, it was the Harlem River which gave birth to the material body which has been christened the Borough of tbe Bronx, and we may see further that it is still the Harlem River that is stimulating the phenomenal growth that that district has displayed during little more than the last half decade. When it was proposed only a few years ago that the Federal Government, in the discharge of its duty, in the im¬ provement of the rivers and harbors, should undertake the dredging of a deep-water channel between the North and the East rivers, there were men ready to advocate even the fill¬ ing in the Harlem channel altogether, calling their sugges¬ tion the proposed removal of an obstruction to the growth of the city. But when those men pass that way now and observe the almost measureless piles of building material that are to be seen along its shores they cannot help confessing to their short-sighted view. The improvement provided more than eight miles of new water front along water navigable for deep draught craft, and where the Dock Department has not yet seen its way clear to the opening of some more "exterior streets." The omission has been a source of great economic value to the building trades. Observing, then, that the Harlem River, fiowing as it did between the Hudson and the East rivers at the vei-y point where the cut-off was most needed for the traffic of the north end. has been the chief factor in the improvement of Harlem and the Borough of the Bronx, we may look further and see what other factors have been at work promoting the growth of that section of the city. Possibly, the next factor to be found would be the scenic features that the Borough of the Bronx can boast. Fine scenery within the boundaries of great cities does not count for much. In fact, ex'cept for its advantages in the location and decoration of parks, it does not count for anything. In the building of a city, if there is a sightly hill that is not too tall or too precipitous to be attacked, it must be leveled down by the builders to make it conform to the grade of the streets, and if there are any babbling brooks they must be fllled up or covered over for the same reason. Then, when all is done, little remains visible except extended lines of brick, stone and mortar, distressing or delightful to the eye, as the case may be.