This very handsome building on the south side of Bryant Park was erected in 1905 as the Engineers' Club and was designed by Whitefield & King.

One of the firm's partners, Henry D Whitfield was the brother of Andrew Carnegie's wife, Louise. Mr. Carnegie paid for half of the building's construction cost and Mr. Whitfield's firm as somewhat similar to a garage it had designed for the Carnegies in 1904.

According to a "Streetscapes" column in the New York Times August 13, 1995 by Christopher Gray, Whitfield & King had beat out Carrere & Hastings and Clinton & Russell among other firms for the design of the club.

The Engineers Club had previously occupied a house at 374 Fifth Avenue near 35th Street and decided to join other clubs then building on 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues: the New York Club at 20 West 40th Street and the Republican Club at 54 West 40th Street.

At that time, Mr. Carnegie offered $1.5 million for a joint professional engineers center and, according to Mr. Gray, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Institute of Mining Engineers bought the property at 25 West 39th Street behind the Engineers Club and commissioned Hale & Rogers to design a Roman-style building.

Mr. Gray noted that features of the facade of the Engineers Club "are the giant Corinthian pilasters at the second and third floors and the giant columns at the top," adding that "inside, the club had the usual assortment of rooms, including 66 bedrooms and a 300-seat dining room that covered the entire 11th floor. These attractions nearly doubled the membership, to 1,898. Carnegie ultimately paid $450,000 of the $900,000 cost. Mark Twain spoke at the dedication in December 1907."

In 1979, Mr. Gray wrote, "the engineers left 40th Street for rented quarters, selling to a developer, David Eshagin. He gave his architect, Seymour Churgin, the difficult task of dividing up the large clubrooms into apartment-sized units. Whether for economy or for style, they left the giant open marble stair hall running from the first to the third floors and left several of the large central spaces as giant hallways."

The main club room and the library on the second floor were divided into four apartments. The building was converted to a co-op in 1983.

In the 1990s, Midtown Preservation of Oyster Bay, L.I. began a replacement of the marble on the fourth and 11th floors with fiberglass replicas, according to Mr. Gray.

In the conversion, the building was named The Columns.

The building is one of the most attractive of those around Bryant Park. It has a rusticated one-story base beneath a two-story stone face above which the building's shaft is red-brick with jagged stone quoins. The first, third and 11th floors have arched windows and the building has a nice cornice and stone window surrounds.