The four-and-a-half story building was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Georgian Revival style.

The entrance is through a central porch on the east side of the building, designed by James Edwin Ruthven Carpenter Jr. as part of an annex completed in 1924.

It was then used by several tenants for short terms, including Charles Joel Duveen, the International Silk Guild, and The Salvation Army.

The government of Argentina has owned the building since 1947; it initially used the house as the offices of an Argentine Navy commission before opening a consulate there.

[4][7] The block of 56th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenue contained rowhouses by 1871, many of which were recessed from the lot line and had entrance stoops.

[9] The Hollins House at 12 West 56th Street, later the Argentinian Consulate General to New York City, was designed by McKim, Mead & White in the Federal Georgian Revival style.

"[14] The main portion of the building, the original residence, is at 14 West 56th Street and is four and a half stories tall.

The center window at the third story formerly had an iron balcony but was subsequently equipped with a flagpole and Argentine flag.

[11] White had designed the building with a setback wing facing 10 West 56th Street, which had been developed nearly simultaneously.

[14] On the east side of 12 West 56th Street is the two-story wing, designed for the Calumet Club.

The portion of the annex facing the street contains the building's main entrance, a single-story aedicule with a metal gate inside an archway.

[11] The house was commissioned for Harry Bowly Hollins,[1] a financier, banker, and railroad magnate who founded the firm H.B.

Hollins hired McKim, Mead & White to design his house, but an 1881 covenant prevented Edey from building a structure out to the lot line until 1901.

[21] The Hollins family officially lived in Islip, Long Island, at least according to a 1905 census conducted by the New York state government.

[8] Leland Roth writes that McKim, Mead & White made renovations to the house in 1903.

[22][23] However, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) was unable to find records of any alterations made in 1903.

Over the next decade, the Edey and Hollins families did not host any events together, and neither The Brooklyn Daily Eagle nor The New York Times made any mention of the two houses as a pair.

[30][31][32] The club officially took title to the building in July, with plans to remodel the house and open it by that September.

Carpenter was hired to remodel the Calumet Club again and to add an entrance portico on the eastern side of the original house.

[46] The house was to be opened 24 hours a day as a Red Shield Service Club, a lodge and retreat for members of the military.

[48][49] The Salvation Army operated the retreat until the end of World War II and, in that time, served 175,000 members of the military.

[50] Nettie Rosenstein Associates changed its plans to move to the house, selling it to the government of Argentina in May 1947.

[53] The Argentine consulate to the United States in New York City opened in the building afterward.