Engineering Societies' Building | office building, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

 office building, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

243-foot, 15-story Beaux-Arts office building originally completed in 1907 with 13 floors. Designed by Hale & Rogers (partnership of Herbert Dudley Hale and James Gamble Rogers) with Henry G. Morse as a clubhouse/office building, it was funded by a gift from Andrew Carnegie. The building initially served as the home of American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Carnegie's goal was to bring all of the societies together under one roof, including their respective libraries. The American Society of Civil Engineers eventually moved into the Engineering Societies Building on December 17, 1917, and two floors were later added to the top of the building to accommodate the new society. The societies shared an 1,000-seat auditorium on the third and fourth floors and a two-story library on the 12th and 13th floors. The Engineer's Club Building abut this rear of this lot, fronting 40th Street. The founder societies remained in the Engineering Societies Building until September 5, 1961. Having outgrown the space, they moved into the United Engineering Center at 345 East 47th Street, across from the United Nations Headquarters. The Engineering Societies Building was converted into commercial office space and today is the headquarters of Thor Equities.

It has a tripartite design, with a 3-story limestone base, beige brick shaft, and limestone crown. The facade is divided into five bays, with the end bays slightly projecting. The ground floor is heavily rusticated. The entrance is in the westernmost bay; the center bay has a service entrance with a stone surround, and the other three bays have windows; the rustication is splayed over each of these openings. There are also two narrow windows flanking the center bay. A frieze running across the top of the ground floor is decorated with carved foliated rosettes, broken by a pair of small, short openings at the 2nd & 4th bays.

The 2nd-3rd floors at the middle bays have 2-story round-arches, each flanked by Doric columns supporting the entablature capping the base. At the lower part of the 2nd floor are small windows at the center of the arches, with stone surrounds and side panels, topped by small entablatures with swags, triglyph brackets and triangular pediments, and fronted by wrought-iron railings. The arches have metal sash dividing the opening into many small panes; there are scrolled keystones at the tops and foliate carvings above the shoulders of each arch. At the end bays the 2nd floor has 3-over-2 windows unevenly divided into narrower outer panes and wider inner panes, with prominent stone surrounds topped by dentiled cornices on small end brackets. The 3rd floor has three much shorter windows in each end bay, grouped together is a stone surround with a projecting sill. The entablature at the top of the base has a dentiled cornice with a bracket above each of the large columns in the center.

The end bays still project at the brick middle floors, with tripartite-windows set in a vertical band; between each is a splayed brick lintel, stone spandrel panel, and projecting stone sill. There is a small cornice above the 4th-floor window at each end bay. A cartouche tops the 10th-floor windows, with a dentiled cornice capping the shaft. In the center the three bays of windows are framed by stone surrounds, topped by cartouches at the 10th floor. Each floor has wider tripartite windows with iron spandrels, except for the middle bay at the 8th floor and the east bay at the 7th floor, both of which have stone pilasters (wider at the 8th floor) dividing the opening into two halves. The 4th floor also differs in having recessed double-windows in stone surrounds, topped by cornices one end brackets with hanging dendrils. Resting atop the base's entablature, four large roundels crowned with swags and hood moldings frame the three middle bays. At the top of the shaft, on the 10th floor, there are escutcheons with hanging pendants framing each middle bay.

The top section is faced in stone, with large end-bay windows similar to those on the 2nd floor, and the smaller group of three windows above and below. In the center, the base is also recalled, with three double-height round-arches and many-paned windows, this time separated by Corinthian columns. The 12th floor is topped by a modillioned and dentiled stone cornice, above which the original top floor consists of groups of three small windows in each bay. The newer 14th & 15th floors are clad in brick, with single-windows in each bay (narrower at the end bays) at the 14th floor, and smaller attic windows in the recessed 15th floor.

The west elevation shares the tripartite form of the main facade, but with plain single-windows in most cases. At the upper floors, they have stone surrounds, and the small windows above and below the 12th floor are in groups of two instead of three. The cornices above the 10th and 12th floor wrap part way around onto this facade. The east elevation, exposed above the base, has more detail. The five bays of the shaft basically match those on the front facade, but with narrower center bays, and lacking only the cartouches on the piers. The cornices extend all the way back to the rear wall. The crown is also similar, although the center bays lack the grand arches, instead having bricked blind windows divided by single columns instead of paired. The newer top two floors also match the front, merely narrower.

It is now the headquarters of the Thor Equities real estate group.

hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c005893188?urlappend=%3Bseq=257...
www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/realestate/06scap-002.html
forgotten-ny.com/2018/06/39th-street-midtown/