Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-05-23
Stray Topics from
 Little Old New York

NEW YORK, May 22.-Old ManGat- tan is, at present, in the unenviable pc stition of & city changing from an old and ugly, but historically interesting burgh to modern and architecturally attractive city in which everything bears the prosaic marks of newness. Just at present New York is in the stage of transition from one condition to the other. With feverish haste it is divesting itself of its interesting histor- ical features and landmarks, without, however, having anything of architec- tural beauty to show in their place as 1 an equivalent.
 The Five Points House of Industry, for more than half a century land mark in the notorious Mulberry Bend, was abandoned the other day, to be torn down or remodeled for business purposes. The boys and girls in that institution were removed to the new girls home at Ossining and to the Brace Farm School for Boys at valhal- la, near White Plains. By the removal of this building Manhattan will lose another of its historical features, while it will, in all probability, gain nothing in architectural beauty.
 The new building rules which have been adopted by the city seem to wor- " the architects. no little. The new code strictly prohibits encroachments beyond sthe building line and it is 1 this feature to which the architects ob- l iect so strenuously. There has been a law against such encioachments upon the statute books for many years, but | it was never enforced. There are thousands of buildings in New York al the present day which eneroach upon the sidewalk space for distance vary ing from few inches to eight or ter feet.
 Groundspace is extremely valuable 1T New York and 1t is quite natural thai every man who builds house wishe: to utilize every square inch of ground for which he paid an enormous price At the same time he wants his building to look attractive. It is left to the ar chitect to find some way of devising compromise between extreme economy of space and architectural beauty. Int easiest way out of the d fficulty, hereto fore, has been to gain space and oppor tunity for greater architectural free dom of treatment by encroaching upor the sidewalk space. Stoops, whole flights of steps and bay windows were boldly built out beyond the building l4ne and materially cutting down th' available sidewalk space. On some oi the fashionable resid nee streets some property owners even went so far al | to extend their front yards or areai several feet beyond the building line thus enlarging their groundspace at thu expense of the city.
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 In Mount Vernon, one of the suburbs north of New York, a man was arrested the other day because his rooster haC disturbed his neighbors by growing a tht break of day. Although there i no ordinance in the village which pro hibits the keeping of chickens on mans premises, the owner of the afore said rooster was found guilty of main taining a nuisance and warned to keeI his rooster from growing early in tho morning like other roosters in less sen sitive neighborhoods. Now the anna teur chicken raiser has the choice be tween muzzling his rooster or to ex change him for one of a "crowless | brand.
 Another officer had a~peculiar task l the other day to arrest a parrot with an extensive vocabulary of swearwords and baseball slang, who had escaped from his owners premises and had es tablished himself in hollow tree ir one of the parks. The bird attracted big crowd by his loquacity and scan daliz d the visitors of the park by his lurid swearing. The interview between the officer and the parrot, after the bluecoat had climbed the tree and reached the summer home of the pro fame bird, was quite thrilling and some what painful for the guardian of the peace and furnished TO end of amuse'