Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1910 — Page 3

Build Model Village with Sage Millions

UST out of New York, along ; the line of the Long Island 4& ■ railway, between Jamaica and Long Island City, there is springing into being a village that for construction ttl 'd architecture promises to be uniq ue This village, it is understood, will have the distinction of being the first flreproof village in the United States, it is .the model village being constructed by the Russell Sage Foundation Homes Company (an offshoot of the Russell Sage Foundation) for the comfort of the clerk and the mechanic who has difficulty in finding within his means desirable Quarters in the city. The traveler along the line of the Long Island railway may already see beginnings of this remarkable community. Below him, roads stretch across the small plain that flows between the track and the deep green forest in the middle distance. They are a little ragged in outline now, but promise to be lines of beauty when the borders are sodded and clipped. Young trees rise from the Irregular shaped spots of green which are destined some day to be park spaces. Close by Italians are busily engaged in excavating cellars and layng concrete walls. If one’s imagination is keefi enough he can picture the village, with its attractively designed brick and stucco walls and red tile roofs, glowing against the fresh green of the parking and the forest and the shimmering smooth-surfaced highways. “There has been a great deal of mystery regarding the village. Those who have had charge of the details of the plan have been willing to say only a little until their plans were fully matured, owing to the unique character of the undertaking. The problem involved not only the laying out of the tract in such a way as to provide at pnce surroundings that wbpld appeal to and educate the eye aim furnish a maximum of light and air to living rooms, but also the study of methods of combining the distribution of space, the design of external walls and of building materials in such a way as to provide ample, conveniently located and well lighted rooms, surrounded by artistically pleasing walls in fireproof materials. This was to be done in such a way as to provide the maximum of quality with the minimum of cost. It was essential that they should do mofe than meet the competition of the ordinary tenement house. The. accommodations should be illustrations of what could be done commercially for the wage earner in the groups above the laborer, an incentive to others to go and do likewise. The work of the projectors has now been carried forward to a point where plans for several of the different types of buildings have been filed with the New York City Department of Buildings. While some of these may be amended in details, they give an impression of what the development will be like. These plans include a railroad station, a hotel, two and three family apartment houses, one family houses ’ and low-priced homes for workingmen. The main street of the village is the only thoroughfare connecting the present village of Forest Hills on the north side of the railroad embankment with the model village on the south side. Just east of the bridge carrying the tracks over the street will be the railroad station and the station square. This square, whose westerly boundary will be the avenue, apparently is to be a civic center. It is to have unusual treatment. The hotel win front on the square and face the station. It will be in four parts, the central section of the main group being an octagonal tower eight stories in height and topped with a tiled dome. The entire building will be Irregular in shape, the main roof line being an obtuse angle to conform to the angle of the square and a street leading from it toward the southeast. The tower will stand in the angle. The wing extending along the station square will be 110.6 feet long and five stories high, while the other wing will be 70.6 feet long and three stories in height. Along the front will be an arcade with flattened and elliptical arches, harmonizing in curve with those carrying the passages over the streets. Fronting on the arcades behind the arches are to be stores. The ground floors of all the buildings surrounding the square apparently will be designed for use as business places. With these ornamental arches in front of them it would appear that there will be little opportunity for display signs. A village square without obtrusive and Inartistic signs will be a novelty. The northerly wing, fronting on the square, will contain four stores, 52 rooms and seventeen baths,, according to the plans. On the level of the second* fl° or and over the arcade there is to be an open-air promenade 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Along the front of this w,!l be a pergola with latticed columns. One would imagine from the design that the young city who chanced to have a room here would have a delightful spot to pit over his cigar l In the evening, lookdown into the cheerful, almost European square. Perhaps there will little tables, and he can have Ice cream or a lemon squash while Hstenz to the splash of the fountain and nW* lc a band ,n the square. _——

BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE MODEL VILLAGE. Mrs. Russell Sage’s money is now creating a village like this where men of small means may live amid conditions that could not be be duplicated in crowded cities save for the rich. In the foreground at the left is a hotel, connected with the railway station (not shown in the picture) by a covered bridge. Behind that stands another bridge. -At the right is an apartment house, the other structures are cottages, some for two families, others for one family.

This is not beyond the possibilities, although one has to look between the lines of the matter-of-fact drawings to find this picture. On an upper floor there will be several rooms, approximately 10 feet square, which, when considered in conjunction with the other equipment of this floor, including a shower bath, one guesses may be designed for these aforesaid young men. On the west side of the square the excavators and cement workers are busy with their wheel-barrows preparing the foundations for a group of five two and three family apartment houses. There will be no air and light shafts in these terracotta, stucco and concrete apartments, for they have been so designed that the windows of every living room will open directly on the blue sky With the exception of three rooms, one of which is a bathroom, every living room will have a chance at a full volume of sunshine at some period in the day at some season of the year. Externally and internally there will be little suggesting the conventional type of three-story apartment house. The lots which they will occupy are 110 feet deep and 20 feet wide. The building at the south end will be set back only a short distance from the building line on the square and run back 61.3 feet. The three buildings in the middle of the block will be set back from the street some 20 feet, and as they will be only 35 feet deep will have yards in the rear approximately 54‘ feet in depth. The fifth and end building will be set nearly as far from the street, but will extend further back on the lot, being 60.6 feet deep. All of the houses will be three stories high. On the ground floor of each will be a store, and in the rear of the two long apartments quarters for the janitor, with bathroom and other conveniences for the comfort of the custodian of the building. All will be heated from a central heating plant. The entrances to the end buildings will be on the side streets. There will be two apartments on a floor, one at the front end and one at the rear. In the formebThefe will be living and dining rooms side by side, each 9 by 16 feet, with several windows on two sides in each. In their rear will be the kitchen, with its equipment of gas range, refrigerator, sink, tubs, and closets. This room will be 7.4 by 12.2 feet in dimenslons. . - _ The rear apartment is smaller, containing only a living room, a bath, two bedrooms and closet space. On the third floor in the tower of the front is a studio, 18.2 by 19 feet, and in the peak, storerooms and lockers. There is also opportunity for persons to sleep in the open air in a balcony if they desire to do so. Tills building, it is expected, will cost $12,400. If the annual rental were placed at 10 per cent, of the investment, as is customary in Manhattan, it would require only $1,240, divided between the store and five families, to carry the investment in the building with the usual return to the owner. The building at the north end of the row will have only one apartment on a floor. This will consist of a living room, dining room, a kitchen, three bedrooms and a bathroom and five closets. The rooms in general dimensions are similar to those in the other apartment and those in the three smaller intermediate apartments. This building will be connected by a bridge with the western end of the railroad" platform. Its cost is estimated at $10,300. The ten three-story and extension one-family houses for which plans have been filed do not impinge upon A. '

the square. These will be constructed of reinforced concrete, terracotta and brick, and will have a peak roof and asbestos shingles. They will have party walls. The first floor will be divided into) a parlor, hall, dining room and kitchen, the latter to be equipped with a gas range, hot water boiler and all the other modern accessories of the kitchen. There will be front and back porches. On the second floor will be three bedrooms of good size, a bathroom and closets. The top floor will contain a bedroom 12 by 16.2 feet. There will also be a loggia. According to the plans these buildings will cost $2,800 each, which apparently would make the rental very reasonable. The plans do not state whether this includes all the plumbing and the heating apparatus. The plans show that the experiment of attempting to construct a village that will be ideal from the artistic, social and economic point of view is going to be an interesting one. Apparently it is not going to cater to a great extent to the unskilled labor class for whom the philanthropist has been thinking heretofore in his efforts to improve housing conditions.

STRIKE OF CHORUS QUELLED

Manager’s Threat That Singers Would Have to Walk and Swim Home Was Enough. Speaking of the opera recalls the story of the threatened strike of the chorus of the Metropolitan when it was playing three years ago at the Nixon in Pittsburg. It was in April and the last clay of the season/ After Pittsburg the company was going east to disband for the summer. The chorus is imported from Europe every year, or was then, under contract to sing a stipulated number of weeks, all road expenses and passage from Europe and return included. Ernest Goerlitz was managing, the road tour then for Conried and was just settling with the local manager for the performance, which was “Il Trovatore,” a matinee, and witnessed by the largest crqwd ever packed into a Pittsburg theater to hear grand opera. An attendant came hurrying to the box office from behind the scenes and reported that the chorus was going to refuse to sing. Goerlitz bolted for the stage. He was back in ten imnutes smiling. “That fool chorus was going to strike,” he explained. “I don’t know what , about - As soon as they saw me come on the stage they began shouting at me in six languages. 1 never waited to hear what the complaint was, but jumped on a chair and, shaking my fists in their faces, 1 shouted: “ ‘Now, look, all of you. You either sing or you don’t sing. If you sing, well and good, but if you don’t sing you walk to New York and swim to Europe.’ ” They could be heard singing lustily at that moment.

Up to Father.

“Father.” “Well, what is it?” “it says here. ‘A man is known by the company he keeps.* Is that so, father?” “Yeq, yes, yes.” “Well, father. If a good man keeps company with a bad man. is the good man bad because he keeps company with the bad man. and is the bad man good because he keeps company with the good man?”—Punch.

Sure to Arrive.

Many things come to him who waits, Including his wife’s relatives poverty and old age.—Life.

KICKED INTO BASEBALL GAME

Harry Lord, Crack Third Baseman of Chicago Americans, Took to Playing Naturally.

By HARRY LORD.

I was kicked into professional baseball. When I was a boy I played the game, but never with any thought or desire to use baseball as a means of gaining a livelihood. I had ambitions in other directions. I played at high school, but never gave the game much serious thought until I went to Bates college. There I began to study the game, and also football, playipg on both the ’varsity teams. I played the games because I liked them, and the further I advanced in- baseball the more of the possibilities in the line of making plays I saw. The game interested me beyond the mere physical enjoyment. There was a lot of pride to be taken in accomplishing a play by outthinking or outwitting the opponents. I began to study to see how the major league players did things, and compared their ways of making plays 'with the ways we had at college. Still I hadn’t any idea of entering the game professionally until near the end of my college career. I was young, and the necessity of making a living salary was forced upon me. I began to cast around to see what my chances were in realizing upon my experience and education derived from a college course. The prospect was not a promising one. I had a hard fight with myself, but finally decided to abandon my career temporarily at least. I joined the Worcester club (under Jesse Burkett. One needs a good drill master in starting in baseball, and Burkett, no matter what else people may think of him, is a good teacher. He is a natural instructor of men, and has the power to illustrate, his I learned the finer points of the tradte-there, then went to Boston.

While going into baseball almost accidentally I have found it a clean and honorable profession and one likely to develop a man and make him not only fight for his own rights but respect the rights of others. The only objection I can see to the profession for a man is the traveling. One becomes too much of a wanderer and misses home life.

No boy should try to start in baseball with the idea thatTt is “fun,” for

Harry Lord.

there is much hard work and a great deal of pain and hardship connected with it. It is wearing on the body and on the mind, and the strain of a hard season wears quickly upon even the strongest. Besides, there is less of a place for the “joy man” in baseball than in any profession. They do not belong and they cannot stand the strain long.

ASKS FOR NEW GOLF “SPOTS”

Follower of Game Wants Far West to Have Occasional National Tourney—ln East Too Often.

Picific coast and middle-western golfers are agitating strongly the holding of the national amateur championship in other sections of the country than in the east, as they have been torso long. They declare the holding of The tournament in New York or New Jersey or in the New England states has practically prohibited farwestern golfers from getting any chance to compete. It is advocated that in four years of tournaments two of them should be held in the middle west alternated with one of the Atlantic and one of the Pacific coast. This, they believe, will make it posslble for golfers from all over the country to compete in the tourneys. There is a general feeling of dissatisfaction in the west with the conduct of all forms of athletics and this has at length spread to golf. The effect of this is seen in all sports. In track athletics the east conceded the national championships to New Orleans this year and the event is sure to go next season either to Chicago or San Francisco. In other sports the viewpoint has changed. Franklin B. Morse, in the Golfers’ Magazine, advocates the need of more representative tourneys. His opinion coincides with that of other western players, and experts in this division of the country think he has some grounds for complaint.

Worse and Worse.

“Mrs. Puyfer holds her head up higher than ever when she is with Mrs. Widgeham.” “Why so?”

“Mrs. Puyfer has a son in college who Is a fullback, while Mrs. Wldgeham’s son is only a halfback.” “Gracious! I’d hate to see the way, they’d treat Mrs. Whopplngton. Her son is only a quarterback.”

CRACK ILLINOIS FOOTBALL PLAYER

Although the new football rules have placed a premium on team play and are far from making the sport a one man’s game, they have succeeded In bringing out one player on each team whose work must be of a highclass to insure success. Quarter-back or field general, call him by either name, must be of higher class than ever before and gridiron games of the future will be more a battle of wits between the men occupying the directing positions on the opposing elevens than ever before. This must not be taken to imply that the game is one for the individual star. The coaches are insisting more strenuously than ever upon team work, and although the work of the men is individualized the work of thel eleven individuals must be fused into a perfect unit to insure success. A study of the teams which have met with success in the west this season shows that each has a star in what is known as the quarter-back position, although in some of these teams the man has little in common with the quarter-back of past years. Minnesota has John McGovern, a good field general. Illinois, conqueror of Chicago, has two brilliant men alternating at the place, Otto Seiler and John Merriman. Michigan’s inability to roll up good-sized scores in the early games is directly traceable to the experiment Yost has made in his generals. At Minnesota McGovern is playing less as the old-style quarter-back than any field general in the west. The direct pass from the snapper-back to the backs is more used by Minnesota than by any other team, and McGovern is relieved from the greater part of the mechanical duties of snapping the ball. He does not get into every play as quarter-backs were coached to do in former years, but keeps clear of the ruck and watches the effect of his attacks. In this way he is able to discover the weakness and strength of the opposing eleven early in the game and so direct his later attacks more intelligently. Taking a glance at the weaker teams in the west, it will be found that Chicago, Northwestern, Purdue and lowa all lack a good field general.

TO PLAY TENNIS IN EUROPE

Miss May Sutton and Miss Hazel Hotchkiss Will Contest in Covered Court Tournaments.

It was news in tennis circles in New York the other day that Miss May Sutton and Miss Hazel Hotchkiss are

May Sutton.

planning a trip to Europe this winter for the purpose of playing in some of the big tournaments on covered courts on the continent and in England. Miss Hitchkiss is the present American champion at women’s singles. She has never been abroad, though more than once It has been reported that she in-

Merriman of Illinois.

Chicago has been depending upon! Eberle Wilson for quarter-back and; field general. Wilson, to many experts, looks like a good backfield man or end, but there is none who asserts he is a good director of plays. None of the other teams mentioned has a field general, although their quarterbacks are fair passers and in every way meet the- requirements formerly laid down for men playing their positions. The same field general used to be laughed at by those spectators at football games who were not ardent enthusiasts. In the Chicago-Michigan game of 1905, when Walter Eckersall gave the greatest exhibition of generalship ever seen In the west under the rules in force at that time, a spectator remarked: “Well, I don’t see why you call that generalship. It seems to me all he has to do is to call for a play and rely upon the strength and weight of his team to bring success.” That this is a narrow view of the field general of the old days is unquestionable, but that there is some cause for the criticism Is evident. With five yards to gain in three downs or even ten yards to gain in the same number of plays, much depended upon the push and pull of the Interference. ' With the pushing and pulling eliminated, the quarter-back must direct his plays so that they will gain ground through their unexpectedness, and in picking suitable formations lies the greatest opportunity for a demonstration of the qualities of a director of the play. Not only must the quarter-back this year know every formation in the repertoire of the team and the propter way of working it, but he must know the strength and weaknesses of every player both on his own and the opposing eleven. It would appear simple for the quarter-back to learn the strong points of his own team-mates, but it is far from easy. His knowledge of his own men must be perfect and must take in every little point, even those which seemingly are unimportant The knowledge of the opposition, however, need only be superficial, and therefore is much easier to .gain.

tended to try for the women’s singles at Wimbledon. Miss Sutton is ex-American and exEnglish champion and is remarkable as the only American to score at Wimbledon. When she played in England a few years ago she created a great sensation and showed that she was in a class by herself. If the two California girls make the journey some excellent play is promised as England now boasts of an exceptionally Ante player in‘Mrs. I .ambert Chambers. This season she went through without a single defeat.

OUT OF FOOTBALL FOR GOOD

Jesse Peterson, Captain of Williams College Eleven, Suffers Serious Injury in Game. It is announced that Jesse Peterson of Lockport, N. Y., captain of the Williams football team, is out of football forever as a result of Injuries re. ceived during a tie game with New York university. Peterson had one of the small bones in his right ankle broken within the first two minutes’ play, but pluckily. continued until the end of the third) period. Examination then showed that the injury was a serious one. The at> tending surgeons declare that the strain of a half-hour’s hard play upon the Injured bone did so much dam age that he will be lame for life.

Baseball Injury Fatal.

Harry Bird died at Rockford, 111, the other day from injuries received in a baseball game a year ago, when he was hit in the stomach by a hatted ball.