Year: 1876

Real Estate Owners and Rapid


An impulse to protect themselves from the
encroachments and absorptions that are prac-
tised by great corporations whenever they
obtain foothold is very natural on the part
of property owners everywhere, and it is
not surprising, therefore, to find the people
on Pearl street in revolt against the con-
struction of any portion of an elevated rail-
road in that thoroughfare. In the fulmina-
ton of their wrath these gentlemen say
many things that are, from their point of
view, true and just. They urge that the con-
struction of the road will damage their prop


erty in such a way as to drive certain occu-
pations TO other streets that it will do fur
ther damage by obstruction of the sidewalk ;
that if the Legislature had the authority to
give the use of the streets to a corporation it
is iniquitous to do so; that the corpora
ton should be compelled to purchase its
right of way, and that in Pearl street the
Legislature does not possess the right to
give the use of the street, because the prop
erty in the land on either side goes to the
middle of the street, and the street itself is
private property, never conveyed to the
city for public uses, but only opened by
the owners for convenience. In all
these views there is, ns we have said, an ele-
ment of justice as seen from the standpoint
OF the owners Bat they must be contem-
plated rs well from the standpoint of great
public necessity. 1t is an absolute need of
the people of this city, of every class and
condition, to have very greatly improved
facilities of transit-such facilities as can
only be given by steam railway. If some
men are to make fortunes out of this neces-
sity it cannot be helped. Such a railway
must be constructed somewhere, and, pre-
sumably, to the inconvenience or injury of
somebody for, as the law provides for in
IDENTITIES, it clearly contemplated that some
body's toes would be trodden upon. In q
case of imperative necessity there will be
some indifference in the common mind as to
whether the people inconvenienced are in
Pearl street or Water street. Now, as this
road must run somewhere, should the com
pany be compelled to purchase its way?
Probably that fact would at the start load
the enterprise with burden it could not
carry. This necessity was the ruin of sew
eral companies in London, and crippled for
years the whole system of rapid transit there.
Doubtless the use of the streets thus
given might fairly be regarded as sub
sidy. But had the Legislature the right
to give Pearl street? That is a question
for the courts. It is known that in
different streets of the city the rights
of the public have. different limitations-a
fact growing out of incidents in municipal
history; but any right well based on such
limitations will be protected by the courts
AS to the injury of property it is cited that
an elevated railway will so obstruct the light
that merchants will not be able to sample
tea and coffee. In the next ten years one
million people are to live five miles above
the City Hall, and the men are mostly to
come down town to their daily occupations.
Imagine that million depending on the horse
cars because a few hundred gentlemen have
fancy for sampling tea and coffee in Pearl
street, with about fifty miles of other streets
open to them in that quarter of the city. In
the presence therefore, of any rapid transit
scheme likely to meet the public needs these
reasons of the Pearl street men are of little
account; but it is only for the public inter-
est that such private interests can be set
aside, and il, as is reported, this Pearl street
rapid transit is part of scheme for the be-
trayal of the public interest in rapid transit
and for the aggrandizement of knot of
sharpers the case is very different.