The exterior was originally conceived in concrete, but due to construction difficulties with the complex design and shortages from the war, much of the building was actually realized in brick, covered with stucco.

The building was heavily damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, leaving it in a state that, as the architecture blog A456 noted, was ironically more in line with Mendelsohn's conceptual sketches[5] than the pre-war structure was.

In tower telescopes a coelostat (a system with two deflecting mirrors, pronounced "seelostat") at the top of a vertical construction directs light down to an objective.

The telescope has a lens objective of 60 cm diameter and focal length of 14 m. Rooms for observations and measurements are located at the base of the tower.

Another rotating mirror directs the sunlight to the spectrograph lab located in the basement behind an earthen wall on the southern side of the tower.

Soon after research started at the site, it became evident that the proof sought would be harder to obtain than originally anticipated since the minimal shift of spectral lines was obscured by other solar influences.

However, Einstein and Freundlich had from the beginning not only been interested in the specific problem of the red shift, but had also intended basic research in solar physics, and the laboratories were so designed that new equipment could be installed without difficulty.

The characteristics and behavior of magnetic fields provide the key to understanding solar activity and are at the focus of work at the Einstein Tower.

In fact, it was built using a mixed construction method: parts of the main structure, the stairs in the tower and its end below the dome were cast from concrete.

A few meters in front of the stairs to the Einstein Tower and set into the pavement of the forecourt is a fist-sized art object, a bronze reproduction of a human brain highly reduced in size, its shiny surface a sign of wear, inscribed with the four characters, 3 SEC.

Taking up this idea, März titled his work "the 3 SEC Bronze Brain – Admonition to the Now – Monument to the continuous present" (translation).

[citation needed] With the newest refurbishment of the Einstein Tower, a sign in front was unveiled with an access to the digital exhibition Einsteinturm revisited.

[10] The exhibition shows how the Einstein Tower was conceived both scientifically and architecturally, and explains, why it needs to be refurbished on a regular basis.