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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 77, no. 1988: April 21, 1906

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April 21, 1906 RECORD AND GODE 711 ESTABUSHED ^ S^ARpH £1=^^ IS68. Dd/otiB to R.l\LEstate,BuiLdiKg A;_Ra(iTi;eTiJHE,h{o-usnloiDDEGaF{ATlo»I. BL;5(^%ss Ai/o Tn^MEf. OF GtKEi^rl 1Kte:r,est . PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS Published eVerg Saturday Communications should bo addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New York i Telepbone, Cortlandt 3157 "Entered at the Post Office af I^'eiu Yorl^; N. Y, as second-class matter." Vol. LXXVII. APRIL 21, 1906. No, 1988 INDEX TO DEPARTMENTS. Advertising Section. Page. Paga. Cament ....................xxv Law..........................x.1 Consulting Engineers ........xvii Lumber .................xxTlll Clay Products ...............xxiv Machinery ...................It Contractors and Builders.......vi Metal Work..................xs Electrical Interest ..........vlil Quick Job Directory........xxlli Flreprooflng ..................iii Real Estale..................xiii Granite ....................xxvl Roofers & Rooflng Materials.,.! Heating ...................xxi Stone .....................xxvl Iron and Steel..............xviii Wood Products ............xxtx THIS bull market started in W'all Street in the beginning of 1904, since whicli time it has had to overcome more obstacles than would have seemed possible could they have been forseen. First came the Baltimore fire, then, the war be¬ tween Japan and Russia, which hept the financial heart of the world in its throat until the Peace at Portsmouth. This was promptly followed by revoiution, social and financial in Russia which made the war seem preferable by comparison. The mar¬ ket has been all the time living in daily fear of some new disconcerting utterances of Mr. Roosevelt. It never knows what new condition of things the President may hear of and make the subject of a message to Congress asking for new legislation according to his views. As former President Ben¬ jamin Harrison once said of Mr, Roosevelt, "He expects to remedy before night any condition of which he is flrst apprized the same morning." However, the bull market has with it this "uncertain quantity" every day, combined with wars, fires, earthquakes and occasional 100% money. To these things must be added what may be designated as the new national game of corporation baiting. It has been supposed that the Stock Ex¬ change could be relied tipMi as an agency to make riches take wings, but it would seem that Mr, Roosevelt sees the need of special legislation to separate successful men from their money. Now this "week we have the frightful San Francisco calamity, the latest of the disasters the financial markets have to con¬ tend with. Let it not be forgotten that if Wall Street should be forced to succumb at last, real estate and general business will follow fast enough. The mistake is often made by manufac¬ turers and merchants of thinking that Wall Street's troubles have no interest for them, A man might as well be indifferent to hi', heart's action. Secretary Shaw keeps repeating that "the legitimate business interests of the country are not suffering," so far as he can observe. His fear that the deposit of money in the banks will find expression in a rise of prices in Wall Street, and that he will be charged with having brought about the rise la pitiful. Does he not know that Wall Street speculators find their profit in a fall as well as in a rise; that they are the only class in the country that can turn a financial storm to ac¬ count; tbat the manufacturer, merchant, farmer and planter cannot go "short" of their own or neighbor's enterprises, but must fall if they cannot weather the financial storm? The Wall Street operator will give as much for advance information that Mr. Shaw is not going to act as he will for information that Mr. Shaw is going to act. Must the country suffer because the Secretary of the Treasury is trying to get even with the shifty and shuffling person, the Wall Street operator? Is not the country paying a pretty high price for Mr, Shaw's attempt to beat Wall Street, Without a great national bank such as England, France and Germany have—with banks that are but little more than heartless lending institutions, it is only necessary for this poor country to have a Shaw to be poor indeed. Last week we said, referring to the stock market, that it would be influenced entirely by the money rate, and it has been, and until money settles down it will continue to be. The market gives evidence every day that it wants to go up, and will do so when it'bas a chance, and when one has said this all has been said. ■ =" THE transforming touch of improving change has, within the past decade, reached practically every part of Man¬ hattan, improving values in all neighborhoods and transforming them in many. An inconspicuous but still notable exception to this has been found in the river front section between Wall street aud Corlears Hook at Grand street. The lower part of this city has borne for many years the designation of "The Swamp," as the headquarters of the wholesale leather busi¬ ness of New York, and a little further north the drug business, that is to say, the wholesale drug business, has been established for many years. But the bulk of the water front and of the property adjacent to the water front along the main streets be¬ tween Wall and Grand and iu those intersecting streets which they cross has had only a partial and imperfect develop¬ ment. On the corresponding portion of the West Side, be¬ tween the Battery and 14th street, there have been enormous gains. That business follows commerce is an established rule downtown, and the development of the dock facilities of the lower West Side has brought shipping to it, and through ship¬ ping, warehouses, factories, railroad terminals, and wholesale houses. On tbe East Side the perils of navigation on the East River were for many years a bar to the growth of shipping, and the dearth of wharf developments in Brooklyn, opposite, had an unfavorable effect. Notwithstanding this, a considerable part of the Hudson River canal boat traffic is carried around the Battery to the East Kiver, and some of the largest New England steamship lines running through the East River have their landing places on the Hudson. THE development of Park avenue above 59th street will bear watching during the next few years. When the New York Central announced that it was going to run electric instead of steam cars through the tunnel, it was generally supposed that the avenue would become available as a site for expensive resi¬ dences, and certain lots w^ere bought and one or two houses built on that assumption. But the tendency to use the aveuue in this way has not gained any headway; and recently there have been indications of another tendency in an opposite direc¬ tion. Two sites between GOth and SOth streets have been bought, which will be improved by large fireproof apartment houses; and it looks as if any property on Park avenue in the residential section which is available for reimprovement would be used in this manner. The avenue can never become a handsome thoroughfare devoted to private residences, because so many of the corners are already improved with apartment houses, which are too expensive to be thrown into the scrap heap, aud then the East Side really needs a thoroughfare in which apart¬ ment houses of largest size can be erected. Madison avenue is not well adapted to the purpose, because the lots are shallow. The corners are strongly held. Lexington avenue will doubt¬ less be lined with many such buildings; but it is not wide enough to permit the erection of apartment houses of the largest size. Park avenue will be quieter than either Lexing¬ ton or Madison avenue, and it is so wide that a twenty-story building could be erected, if desired. Such buildings are needed, because of the large and increasing numbers of people who want to live in taat part of the city. These people may prefer private houses; but in the course of time all but the very wealthy will be forced to put up with apartments. The area in which such people care to live is very much restricted and there seems at present to be no chance of making It larger. CONTRIBUTING to the growth of real estate values in Man¬ hattan has been the development of local manufactures and the large increase in the number of factories in conse¬ quence. For many years the claim was continually made that high rents so far increased the cost of labor in New York that large manuf;;ctures could not withstand the competition of rival factories in suburban towns. New York had, relative to its size, few factories, though the chief factory interests of New York and New Jersey were directed from this city. With the re¬ adjustment of real estate values in neighboring New Jersey to the New York city standard, and with the increase of business in the lines in which New York excels—clothing, millinery and artificial flower-making, and printing and publishing, especialr ly—there has been a decided change. By the last report of the State Department of Labor it was shown that of eight hundred and seventy-five thousand factory employees in New York State, over flve hundred thousand were in New York city, and of these three hundred and seventy-five thousand in the two boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. Of forty thousand office em¬ ployees of factories (those serving at the headquarters of pro¬ duction), twenty-five thousand were in Manhattan and the Bronx. It has been tound profitahle and advantageoha for manufacturers to secure buildings adapted to their use in New York close to the market of sale and with access to the vast