The portion of the building at the corner of 57th Street and Broadway was built for car manufacturer Aaron T. Demarest and his company.

224 West 57th Street contains a steel-frame curtain wall, concrete piers, and a facade of glazed architectural terracotta.

Inside, both of the former structures had automotive storerooms at ground level and warehouses and repair facilities on the upper floors.

224 West 57th Street's eastern section, belonging to the former Peerless Building, contains a penthouse rising two additional stories above the main roof.

[1] The facade, made almost entirely of terracotta, contains many decorative elements created by the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company.

[1][16] The northern and western elevations or sides of 224 West 57th Street are both subdivided into five groupings, each with three bays, and are connected by a canted corner.

The easternmost grouping on 57th Street has a glass-and-metal doorway under a transom, and is flanked by inscribed bronze plaques with the building's name and address.

The two-story penthouse above the Peerless Building's easternmost section is clad in tan brick and contains terracotta trim, quoined pilasters, round arches with keyed surrounds, and tile signs on the western elevation.

[23] Both constituent structures are supported by an internal steel frame atop concrete foundation piers, with the facade acting as a curtain wall.

[12][16] The surrounding Peerless Building had a double-height ground-floor salesroom,[6][16][24] with a gilded ceiling and marble walls and columns.

[11][25] U.S. Realty, a company associated with builder George A. Fuller, purchased five lots at the southeast corner of 57th Street and Broadway in 1902.

[26][12][13] By December 1908, the Demarest Company leased the three corner lots at Broadway and 57th Street, intending to build a showroom and shop there.

[29] That month, Kimball was hired to prepare plans for a pair of buildings to be occupied by the Peerless and Demarest companies.

[34] By 1926, GM was developing 3 Columbus Circle, a 26-story skyscraper diagonally across from 224 West 57th Street, for use as its New York City headquarters.

[43] During the 1940s, the Automobile Merchants Association took space in the building,[44][45] as did the United States Office of War Information[6] and the Voice of America.

[34] Hearst Communications started to lease space in the Argonaut Building in 1975, and purchased the property outright two years later in July 1977.

[56][51] A branch of TD Bank signed a lease for the ground floor space in 2009,[57] and M1 purchased 224 West 57th Street from Hearst for $85 million the next year.

[23][58] Gensler's renovation was completed in 2011 and received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold award from the U.S. Green Building Council.

[59] George Soros's Open Society Foundations leased all the office space at the Argonaut Building in September 2011,[60][61] with the former ground-floor showroom housing a bank by that time.

[66][67] That June, the delinquent mortgages on the building were sold by Deutsche Bank and another German lender to the George Soros Family office.

[68] Shortly after the Peerless and Demarest buildings opened, Architects' and Builders' Magazine wrote that the designs complemented the Broadway Tabernacle "in a harmonious and satisfactory manner".

[18] In 2007, Gray wrote in The New York Times that the facade, which complemented the long-demolished Broadway Tabernacle, "seems a bit out of place amid the traffic at one of the busiest intersections in Midtown".