The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1911-12-11
REAL ESTATE
IN NEW YORK
While Great Fiuctuation Goes on the
General Tendency is for prices
to go Straight
Up.
LITTLE THINGS ACT
Mere Removal of a Crossing or !
Street Car Transfer Change
May Create Great
Difference.
LITTLE
THINGS

think that good New York City real
estate values do about as little fluct-
uating as anything there is. The
popular theory is that such values rise
steadily but that it takes something
very extraordinary to bring them
down. Elmer D. Coulter OF the John
Jacob Astor estate says this isn't so.
It's perfectly astonishing, he declares.
the way metropolis realty prices jump
up and down and it's still more aston
iishing what trifiing things make them
do SO.
The fluctuations Mr.. Coulter men
tons don't worry the Astor estate
much, because the estate is SO huge
that, when. values in one locality are
slumping, those in some other local
ity are sure to be on the boom. Small
er owners, however, often find the
realty markets eccentricities extreme
ly annoying.
Women shoppers have great deal
to do with it, says Mr.. Coulter.
Look at Thirty-fourth street. The
reason lots there are SO valuable is
that women who go shopping in car
riages and automobiles don't like 60
| ing farther down town into the more
iccngested district.
why, the mere removal OF a cross
walk will often cut down a stores
trade and lower the value of the lot
on which it stands. | know of cigar
store which lost all it's business be-
cause transfers were abolished on the
Fifty-ninth street car line. And the
value of the site was cut clean in
1 two.
For some mysterious reason. the
south side of New York's east and
west streets is almost always more
valuable than the north But Thirty
| fourth street is an exception. When
the big stores began going up there.
a. few large estates owned most of
the lots on the south side and the
merchants established themselves over
the way because it was cheaper The
result was that lots on the north
side have been increasing in value and
those on the south side depreciating
ever since.
Since the Hudson terminal and
the more important ferries are at the
lower end of Manhattan island, the
! financial district will probably stay
where 1t Is, but suppose J. P. Morgan S
Office and the stock exchange were to
move up town.
In spite OF what Mr.. Coulter says,
the general tendency in New York
realty values has been straight up.
Recently compiled statistics show
an increase in Dey street, for instance,
of so per cent since the subway was
finished. There were also heavy adj
vances in Fourth avenue and Forty
second street.
The subway was what helped these
Ethoroughfares, too. 1t failed to in.
crease values in Fourteenth and Tween
ty-third streets but it kept them from
depreciating.
+ Between Seventy-second and One
Hundred and Tenth streets, on the
west side, values have gone up about
10 per cent in ten years, but above
One Hundred and Tenth street they
have simply sky-rocketed. One au.
thority places the increase in Wash.
ington Heights in decade at $780,.
900, 900. There are lots in the Bronx
which are worth today ten times
what they would have sold for ten
years ago.
Naturally the growth OF The city
was mainly responsible for it. but i'm.
proved transportation facilities help