It was built in 1852 and was designed by the firm of Field & Correja in the Italianate style.

The building was purchased by brothers Mark Tennenbaum and Emil Tanner and their brother-in-law Leo Beller in 1943.

[3] The partners operated a textile wholesale business from which they retired in the early 1970s, and the building was subsequently sold.

Justice Karla Moskowitz of the New York State Supreme Court decided in April that it was "clear that the building was considered from the first on architectural as well as historical grounds."

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had argued for the building's preservation, both because of its famous tenant – Brady – and the fact that each of the building's five floors had received a distinctive window treatment, thus indicating that it was an architecturally significant structure and not merely a utilitarian structure.