In 1876, a mansard roof in the Second Empire style was added by the De La Salle Institute.

[4] During the 1837 rebellion, William Lyon Mackenzie and the Reformers marched down Yonge Street with a plan to attack this building and steal the gold stored within – unsuccessfully.

[4] Subsequently, the building was used for various purposes, including a meat processing plant,[5] a recruitment centre during World War I, and industrial uses by Christie, Brown and Company and the United Farmers' Co-Operative Co. (UFC).

In 1921, Christie Brown bought the building from the School Board, mostly for the rear yard property.

The buildings were rented out to various commercial and industrial tenants, including a jeweler, machine shops and the Imperial Oil graphics department, which made Esso signs in the basement.

[7] Per the City's designation: "The Bank of Upper Canada, 252 Adelaide Street East (formerly 28 Duke Street) at George Street (NE), 1830, perhaps by W.W. Baldwin, additions c.1850, additions 1871 for De La Salle College, is designated to be of architectural value as being the home of the first major bank associated with the development of the Province of Ontario, and is probably the oldest surviving building built as a bank in Canada.

The building is also important as a very early, exceptionally well-designed and quite well preserved late Georgian stone-built structure in the neo-Classical style.

It is, moreover, the last remaining building of architectural importance in the Old Town of York area, where it and the later additions, especially those for De La Salle College, give it a dominance in the streetscape at Adelaide and George Street.