The building, originally the headquarters of The New York Times, is the oldest surviving structure of Lower Manhattan's former "Newspaper Row" and has been owned by Pace University since 1951.

41 Park Row contains a facade of Maine granite at its lowest two stories, above which are rusticated blocks of Indiana limestone.

[15] As originally constructed, the northern, western, and eastern facades of 41 Park Row were arranged into three horizontal sections.

These consisted of the five-story base, a six-story midsection of two stories above four, and the two-story mansard roof with dormer windows.

[17][18] The Nassau Street and Park Row facades generally contained several superimposed arches in each bay, similarly to Post's previous commission of the New York Produce Exchange.

[4][24] The original foundations consisted of twenty-two piers—twelve on the perimeter and ten inside the lot line—and each of these piers were 9 feet (2.7 m) wide.

These anchorages are used to secure the iron cross-girders underneath each floor; the 3rd through 11th stories are also supported by beams with hollow-tile flat arches.

[27] The present building's roof contains a wooden water tower, elevator penthouses, a dormer for the stairs, and mechanical equipment.

[7][32] The New York Times and other newspapers would be among the first to construct early skyscrapers for their headquarters, with the current building being one such development.

[35][36] The Times had become popular, with over twice the readership of the competing Tribune by 1855 and was described in Harper's Weekly as having "won a reputation for the fulness [sic] and variety of its news".

[38][39] Times cofounder Edward B. Wesley partnered with investors Frederick P. James and Henry Keep to buy the northern half of the church site for its third building.

The newspaper's other cofounders, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, subsequently bought James's and Keep's shares.

[35] Thomas R. Jackson designed a five-story building in the Romanesque Revival style at the site, with the address 41 Park Row.

[42] The 1851 building, dwarfing that of the Tribune just to the north, was described by the Times in 2001 as "a declaration that the newspaper regarded itself as a powerful institution in civic life".

Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult to move the Times's printing presses to a temporary location, so such a building would have to be constructed while the existing structure kept operating.

Post was commissioned to design a larger structure at 41 Park Row in 1887,[26][41][44][45] and David H. King Jr. was hired as the main builder.

[41] To allow the Times's staff to continue working throughout construction, the fourth and fifth floors were covered with a temporary enclosure made of wood and tar-paper.

[4][24] During construction, the Times's offices relocated in November 1888 and in March 1889 to allow builders to finish portions of the new building.

[29] Jones, who died in 1891, had believed the Times Building to be a monument to himself, having spent large sums on the project.

[51][52] The fire had originated at a wooden partition erected for the construction of the first line of the city's subway system, which ran adjacent to the building's basement under Park Row.

[30] By late 1903, architect Robert Maynicke was hired to remove the original mansard roof, convert a mezzanine to a full floor, and add four stories of offices at a cost of $160,000 (equivalent to $4,357,000 in 2023[c]).

[29] Loft and Company, candy manufacturers, hired D'Oench, Yost and Thouvard to reconfigure the basement and corner store for $25,000.

In July 1904, a heavy stone was dropped, injuring five people,[55][56] and that November, a passerby was killed by a falling beam.

The foundations under the party wall with the Potter Building were reinforced in 1915, and fireproofing work occurred the next year, including the installation of a 3,500-US-gallon (13,000 L; 2,900 imp gal) wooden water tower on the roof.

[11][24][41] The first use of the word "skyscraper" by the Times itself was in an article published on June 13, 1888, in describing the expansion of 41 Park Row.

[73] Moses King's Handbook of New York, published in 1893, described the then-new building as "a masterpiece of the Romanesque style" and "the New-York Times expressed in stone".

[74] According to architectural writers Sarah Landau and Carl Condit, contemporary observers said that the building's style had been inspired by the works of Henry Hobson Richardson.

The rusticated stone facade, large arcades, mansard roof, small relief balustrades, and roll moldings were also similar to Richardson's work.

[17][29] Architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler lauded the arches as "impressive features" that were detailed, yet not "exaggerated in the Richardsonian manner".

[17][75] Art critic Russell Sturgis objected to the horizontal groupings of floors and to the size of the original mansard roof, which he felt was too small compared to the building's height, though he praised the vertical piers.