Engineers' Club Building
The Engineers' Club Building, also known as Bryant Park Place, is a residential building at 32 West 40th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York. Located on the southern edge of Bryant Park, it was constructed in 1907 along with the adjoining Engineering Societies' Building. It served as the clubhouse of the Engineers' Club, a social organization formed in 1888. The building was designed by Henry D. Whitfield and Beverly S. King, of the firm Whitfield & King, in the neo-Renaissance style.
The building's facade is divided into three horizontal sections. The lowest three stories comprise a base of light-colored stone, including a colonnade with Corinthian-style capitals. Above that is a seven-story shaft with a brick facade and stone quoins. The top of the building has a double-height loggia and a cornice with modillions. Inside, the building contained accommodations for the Engineers’ Club, including 66 bedrooms and club meeting rooms. In the early 20th century, the Engineers' Club Building was connected to the Engineering Societies' Building.
The Engineers' Club Building was partially funded by Andrew Carnegie, who in 1904 offered money for a new clubhouse for New York City's various engineering societies. The Engineers' Club did not want to share a building with the other societies, so an architectural design competition was held for two clubhouse buildings. The Engineers' Club Building served as a clubhouse until 1979, after which it became a residential structure. The building became a cooperative apartment called Bryant Park Place in 1983. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a landmark in 2011.
Site
The Engineers' Club Building is at 32 West 40th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building occupies a rectangular land lot with a frontage of along 40th Street, a depth of, and an area of. Two adjacent buildings were once affiliated with the Engineers' Club Building: 28 West 40th Street to the east and 36 West 40th Street to the west. The building was also once connected to the Engineering Societies' Building to the south.The Engineers' Club Building faces the southern border of Bryant Park between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. On the same block are The Bryant and 452 Fifth Avenue to the east; the Haskins & Sells Building to the south; and the American Radiator Building and Bryant Park Studios to the west. Other nearby places include the New York Public Library Main Branch across 40th Street to the north, as well as the Lord & Taylor Building to the southeast.
The surrounding block of 40th Street had contained brownstone row houses through the 1920s. The Engineers' Club Building had directly replaced two brownstone row houses at 32 and 34 West 40th Street. Each of these houses was five stories tall with an English basement and was situated on a lot measuring. The city block already had several social clubs, including the Republican Club and the New York Club, both later demolished. The Engineering Societies and Engineers' Club buildings collectively served as a center for the engineering industry in the United States during the early and mid-20th century. The adjoining area included the offices of three engineering publications on 39th Street, as well as Engineers' Club member Nikola Tesla's laboratory on 8 West 40th Street.
Architecture
The Engineers' Club Building was designed by Henry D. Whitfield and Beverly S. King, of the firm Whitfield & King, in the neo-Renaissance style. It is 13 stories tall, also cited as 12 stories. There is also a basement and subbasement under the above-ground stories. The building occupies its whole land lot at the base. Above the third story, the building is shaped like a dumbbell, with light courts to the west and east.Facade
The primary facade is on the north, facing 40th Street. It is three bays wide and is organized into three horizontal sections: a base, shaft, and capital. It uses a combination of white marble and red brick.. The New York Times wrote the building design "strikes even the layman as sumptuous in the extreme. It is doubtful if anywhere in this country so luxurious a club dwelling exists."The lowest three stories on 40th Street are clad in stone and are each tall. The ground story is designed with rusticated blocks and contains a central entrance flanked by round-arched windows. Above the entrance are large console brackets carrying an entablature. The entrance was designed as a doorway wide, while the windows to either side are wide and twice as high. There is a plaque commemorating Nikola Tesla, who received an IEEE Edison Medal at the building in 1917. There is a Corinthian-style colonnade of fluted pilasters on the second and third stories, with capitals at the top of each pilaster. According to the AIA Guide to New York City, the pilasters "give this a scale appropriate to the New York Public Library opposite". The second-floor windows have eared surrounds, above which are entablatures with swags. The third story has round-arched windows with carved frames. Above is a decorative frieze, as well as a cornice with dentils.
On 40th Street, the fourth through tenth stories are clad in brick, and the outer edges of the facade have stone quoins. The windows are square and have marble frames for the most part. The fourth story is a transitional story and consists of a stone entablature. Four urns flank the fourth-story windows. On the fourth through ninth stories, there is a console bracket above each window, serving as a keystone. At the tenth story, the windows are flanked by carved shields. A stone balustrade runs above the tenth story and is carried on brackets.
The top stories contain a double-height colonnade supported by Ionic-style stone columns. The arches have a slightly different window arrangement at the base, and there is a brick wall behind each column. Atop each arch is a console bracket supporting an attic. The facade is topped by a cornice with dentils, supporting a stone balcony. The west and east elevations are visible above the fifth story and are mostly clad in plain brick with some windows. There are air shafts on both elevations and a fire escape on the western elevation. The Engineers' Club Building was also attached to the immediately adjacent buildings on either side. To the east, the Engineers' Club Building adjoins a brick-and-brownstone structure at 28 West 40th Street, containing four stories and an attic. To the west is a brick structure over a stone storefront at 36 West 40th Street.
Features
The building is served by a set of service stairs and three elevators. The three elevators and the stairs run from basement to roof; one elevator is designed for freight and the two others are for passengers. The passenger elevators fit 12 to 15 people and originally skipped the third floor, while the freight elevator serves the whole building. Also in the clubhouse was a dumbwaiter, connecting the lobby, clubroom, and billiards floor. In addition to the thirteen above-ground levels are two basement levels. The first basement had a restroom and some storage and staff rooms, while the sub-basement had the building's mechanical plant with heat, light, power, and refrigeration.Lower stories
The main entrance leads to a vestibule, which in turn is connected to the lobby. The lobby's piers and Ionic columns made of wood; the wall and the column capitals are made of marble; and the molded ceiling is made with plaster. On the left was the reception room for visitors, while on the right was the writing room for members, containing such furniture as writing tables and mailboxes. The reception room was high with predominantly marble decorations. It adjoined a coat room that could store at least 500 items of clothing, and the writing room adjoined an administration office. The ground floor also had a bar, cigar stand, four telephone booths, and a small bathroom. At the end of the hall was a café with a grill, as well as a connection to the Engineering Societies' Building. Both sides of the lobby have been converted into stores. The old grill in the rear of the lobby was converted into an apartment with ceilings.A grand staircase leads from the west side of the lobby near the center of the house. The staircase has carved newels as well as a banister with metal decorations. It splits into two legs above the lobby, serving the second- and third-story landings. An oil painting of the businessman Andrew Carnegie, who financed part of the building's construction, was hung on the stairway. The third-story landing has a plaster ceiling, a colored-glass oval skylight, and wooden walls. The skylight illuminates the lobby floor below.
The second story was devoted to a lounge/clubroom in the front and a club library in the rear. The lounge did not contain any columns across its entire width. Two large fireplaces were placed in the lounge, one on either side, and the windows on 40th Street provided ample illumination. The library had an oil painting of John Fritz, as well as bookcases on all four sides, with capacity for 18,000 volumes. The third story had a billiards room large enough to accommodate six tables. It was surrounded by a platform about high, with benches for spectators, and contained an ornamental fireplace at each end. In the rear of the third floor were three large rooms, one each for cards, the house committee, and the board of governors. While these spaces have been converted into apartments in the late 20th century, they retain many original design details. The second-floor lounge and library were converted into four apartments, one of which had a mezzanine and an original fireplace.
Upper stories
The fourth through ninth stories contained sixty-six bedrooms. These floors were planned so the rooms could be used en suite or separately. Each bedroom either had an attached bathroom or was connected to one. A common toilet, bath, and shower were also provided off the main corridor of each story. After 1979, the former bedrooms were rearranged into apartments. Unit 4G, a one-bedroom apartment described by the website Curbed New York as a "mini-Versailles", is decorated with hand-painted murals throughout.Above the bedroom stories were the dining-room stories. The tenth story had two large private dining rooms and a spacious reception room in the front. Next to the elevators was a breakfast room, which could also be used for large private dinners. This was connected by a covered bridge to the ninth floor of the Engineering Societies' Building. The tenth story also had its own serving rooms and a "tapestry room". The eleventh story had a dining room seating 300 people. Across the eastern light court was a balcony for service staff. The banquet room opens onto the balcony overlooking Bryant Park. The twelfth story was entirely for the service staff. It had a main kitchen in the rear, adjacent to a butcher shop and a refrigerator. These stories also have been converted into apartments but retain much of their old wooden decoration. One apartment has a mezzanine.
About half of the attic/roof story was reserved for an open roof garden, while the rear of that floor had service rooms. The building's elevators ran directly to the roof garden, and two staircases ran to the attic, one each for workers heading upstairs and downstairs. Part of the roof garden was enclosed in glass. The attic had a kitchen, refrigerator room, servants' bedrooms, and servants' dining rooms. During the 1940s and 1950s, the attic contained a masseuse and barbershop. The modern attic contains two duplex penthouse apartments.