Built in 1902, it was home to one of the nation's first manufacturers of precision engineering and surveying instruments, and a surviving example of Roxbury's late 19th-century industrial development.

It is a relatively architecturally undistinguished brick industrial building, three stories in height, and covered by a flat roof.

The street facing facade is basically ten bays wide, with windows on the first two floors topped by brick segmental arches, and those on the third with stone lintels.

The main block was designed by Boston architect George Moffette, and the ell, added in 1907, was the work of Henry J. Preston.

Its gear was used in surveys for the Panama Canal, in the construction of New York City skyscrapers, and in American polar expeditions of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Robert Peary.