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. 85, no. 2203: June 4, 1910

Real Estate Record page image for page ldpd_7031148_045_00001237

Text version:

Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view About OCR text.
June 4, 1910 RECORD AND GUIDE 1191 itafelED TO REKLEsTA^-BuiLDiffc Afi&rfrrecTURE,KousafoihDEea^Tiwt BiTsDfess Atto Themes Of G^HeR^I iK^Rfsi-j PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET Tablisked Everi/ Satardag By THE RECORD AND GXUDE CO, President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE Vice-Pres. & Genl. Mgr,, H. W, DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER Nos. Jt to 15 Eaat 24tli Street, New Yopfc Cltr (Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.) '•Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. P., os sccond-elass matter." Copyrighted. 1910, by The Record & Guide Co. Vol. LXXXV. JUNE 4, 1910. No. 2203 THE table published by the Record and Guide last week showing the number of new loft buildings projected during the past five years and a half is so interesting and important that it is worth reproduction and further com¬ ment. The table was as follows: FIVE AND A HALF YEARS OF LOFT CONSTRUCTION. Estimated Average total cost. cost. $12,455,750 $115,000 12.213,100 05,000 11 -J',i7,2UO 85,000 1) -ISO HH) 66.000 30,08(i.450 136,000 17,007,000 180,000 Year. Number. 19(^ 108 1906 128 1907 132 1908 143 1909 220 1010 to date 99 Total 830 improvements jn Manhattan. New York is merely reaping a harvest of trouble and e.xpense, which has been allowed to grow unhampered during the past flfteen years. Throughout the whole of that time it has been pointed out again and again that the delay in beginning such improvements was the worst kiud of economy and the most flagrant extravr agance; but nobody paid any attention to these warnings. As long as the situation had not become absolutely intoler¬ able, the city government was content to postpone respon¬ sibility,, and in this evasion it was supported by public opin- icm. Now, however, the situation is rapidly becoming intoler¬ able. The congestion of trafflc in Manhattan Is increasing year by year—both hecause of the expansion of business, its increasing concentration in one district, and the euormous growth iu the use of motor vehicles. . The city has from the beginning done nothing to distribute business or traffic. It has allowed the congestion to accumulate unimpeded, be¬ cause it has allowed property-owners to buiid to any height they pleased; and now any really drastic remedy is impos¬ sible. In the long run tlie property-owners of Manhattan will discover that as an inevitable result of their indifference to the puhlic interest, business will be driven, to the other boroughs, not because of the want of space in Manhattan, but because the street system cannot be reformed for the pui-pose of making the existing space accessible and avail¬ able. Of course, minor improvements may still he made, but it has become impossible to cut new .avenues or streets along the central ridge of the island, and new streets cannot even be run through marginal districts to any advantage until the city possesses the power of excess condemnation. $93,439,600 Average $112,000 According to this table the loft buildings projected during the past seventeen months call for a larger expenditure of money and consequently will add to the stock of the city a larger floor space than the buildings projected during the four previous years; and it should be added that these four years were themselves a period of exceptionally active con¬ struction. Economic conditions can hardly warrant an ex¬ pansion in the construction of one type of huilding so enorm¬ ous and so unprecedented. The Record and Guide fully under¬ stands and admits that conditions do warrant the construc¬ tion of more loft buildings than used to he reciuired a few years ago. Manufacturers and wholesalers find they can pay higher rents for more space in a new huilding north of 14th street, and get it back in increased business and various economies. There are many sound reasons for the migra¬ tion of mercantile houses into the new district, and it is bound to continue. But It certainly cannot continue at a pace sufflcient to absorb the construction of $30,000,000 worth of new floor space in each year; and a continuation of such a rate of construction will not only be disastrous to the newer enterprises, but it will be harmful to the older ones, because it will tempt owners to cut rents and accept inferior tenants. When a district suffers from a burst of over-build¬ ing, it sometimes takes years to make a good recovery, be¬ cause investors become afraid of it, and builders are loth to engage in enterprises of which investors are afraid. It is essential, consequently, that speculative building in the nfew loft districts should cease until buildings now under construction are finished, and until it is discovered to what extent the supply exceeds the demand. PRACTICALLY every real estate expert who has ex¬ pressed an opinion about Mayor Gaynor's idea for a new avenue midway between the existing lines of Fifth and Sixth avenues, has agreed with the Record and Guide that the Mayor both underestimated the cost of the enterprise and overestimated the net benefit which would accrue to adjacent private property. Most of them place the probable expense at nearer $100,000,000 than our own figure of about $75,000,(100; and undoubtedly the Record and Guide's esti¬ mate erred on the side of modesty. The intersection of the proposed avenue with Broadway, which would take place at about 29th street, would be unusually expensive and would destroy as well as create considerable property values. We trust, however, that Mayor Gaynor will not be discouraged, but will have his plau tested by an expert board, because only hy a scientific and impartial examination of actual schemes can public opinion gradually be brought to a real¬ ization of the powerlessness of the city to carry out street THERE are two types of street improvements which may still be possible in Manhattan, and both of them would become much more possible in case the city were to obtain the power of excess condemnation. It is still practicable to run an avenue through a cheap and unimproved section like Greenwich Village, and while a new thoroughfare, such as the extended Seventh avenue, will not do much to relieve congestion at central points, it will do something to divert the stream of business and trafflc to a less crowded route— quite enough to pay for its cost many times over. Seventh aveuue will be particularly useful in this respect, because it is one hundred feet wide. Avenues like Madison, Sixth and Lexington, which are narrower and have trolley cars on them, are far less useful for vehicular traffic. After Seventh avenue has been extended to Varick street, and after a thoroughfare has been opened around the Grand Central Station, Mauhattan will have two additional avenues along which trafflc can move with (for some years at least) com¬ paratively little interruption- ADj)ther type of street im¬ provement which might be possible would be diagonal streets connecting two important centers of congested traffic. New diagonal streets would be expensive because they would cut across existing lines of ownership and would incur heavy damages, but they would have the advantage—not enjoyed by such a plan as that of Mayor Gaynor—of developing new traffic and of actually economizing the use of the streets by affording vehicles a shorter route between two important districts. An idea of this kind li6s behind a plan which Mr. Wiiber C. Goodale has recently suggested in a letter to the "Times," and which is well worth serious consideration. He says: "Four out of five persons desire to travel in a diagonal direction rather than up or downtown. This is particularly true between 34th and 59th streets on account of the location of Central Park, and occupying the centre of Manhattan Island, Fifth avenue at present accommodates a doable traf¬ fic—the traffic of an uptown and downtown street, and further the traffic which should be accommodated by a northeasterly street analogous to Broadway. A new diagonal street run¬ ning frora 37th street and Seventh avenue, cutting through the corner of Bryant Park, and extending to Queensboro Bridge Plaza, Vould have the effect of carrying much trafflc not only to the latter point, but .would also divert traffic to all other avenues, including Park avenue." rT-^ HE RECORD AND GUIDE believes tbat the "Committee X on Congestion" will find a really valuable suggestion in this idea of Mr. Goodale's. If Manhattan needs any one new thoroughfare more than another, it would be an avenue performing the same service for the upper East Side and the lower West Side as Broadway does for the upper West Side and tbe lower East Side. But if it is impracticable to lay out a new Broadway, it may not be impossible to obtain a similar result from a shorter diagonal avenue. Tbe route proposed by Mr. Goodale would have the advantage of a