Q What can you tell us about the lovely building at 25 West 39th Street? ... Gordon Schochet, professor of political science, Rutgers University
The Engineering Societies' Building at 25 West 39th Street was photographed in 1907.
A This majestic work was built in 1907 as the Engineering Societies’ Building, a $1.5 million gift from Andrew Carnegie who wanted various engineering groups to establish a joint professional center.
They chose an old brownstone block just south of the future home of the New York Public Library. Hale & Rogers, with Henry G. Morse, designed a massive limestone and brick facade of 13 stories, 218 feet in height.
It had club rooms for three major engineering disciplines — electrical, mechanical and mining — as well as a floor for groups like the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. They all shared a 1,000-seat auditorium, lecture and assembly rooms and what The American Architect and Building News magazine called the “crowning detail,” a double-height library on the 12th and 13th floors.
That journal, like many others, had long railed against the common practice of leaving the sides of buildings in absolutely plain brick, and it praised the “Aeropolitan dignity” of the wall on the Fifth Avenue side, decorated as if it were a principal facade.
As Carnegie intended, the building became a center for the profession. In 1908, Maj. George O. Squier of the United States Signal Corps said in a lecture there that airplanes would never become offensive weapons. But he predicted bomb-carrying dirigibles, capable of speeds of up to 75 miles per hour, would descend on targets under cover of darkness.
In 1911, the astronomer Percival Lowell stated that there was definitely life on Mars, and he added that the Martians had a lot more reason to doubt life on Earth than vice versa.
The Engineering Societies left their building in 1961, and it was converted to office space. It is now the headquarters of Thor Equities, Joseph Sitt’s real estate investment group.