Building Features

• Exceptional Showroom & Office Space with Unparalleled Ceiling Heights
• Large Column Spacing for Maximum Flexibility
• Fully Equipped Pantries on Each Floor
• Architecturally Distinct Windows Allowing Light on 3 to 4 Sides
• Tenant Sontrolled HVAC
• Attended Lobby with Maximum Security

Area & Size

• Entire 2nd 13,923 rsf
• Partial 3rd 7,300 rsf
• Entire 6th 13,116 rsf
• Entire 12th 11,320 rsf
• Entire 14th 17,400 rsf LEASE OUT
• Possession is immediate
• Term: 5 to 10 years

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.