It was built in 1891 by Boston philanthropist and capitalist, Joshua Sears, who was heavily invested in Peter Kirk's Great Western Iron and Steel Company and was the town site's largest landowner.

In December 2015 the building was purchased by local attorney Simeon Osborn and his wife Monica Hart, who stated they plan to keep the current business and residential tenants.

Reflecting the East-Coast influence of its builder, The building is predominantly Beaux Arts in design; a style newly popular back East but which wouldn't become common place on the West coast until the turn of the 20th century.

The Sears Building was built in 1891 by Boston millionaire, philanthropist and major Kirkland investor Joshua Montgomery Sears II (1854–1905) as part of the speculative land boom following Peter Kirk's proposal of building a steel producing mecca that would rival Pittsburgh on the east side of Lake Washington.

With a yearly stipend from his father's estate and through a series of profitable investments, the young Sears amassed his own fortune.

A major patron of the arts (he at one time owned the Jupiter Stradivarius) he is only remembered today through the famous John Singer Sargent portrait of his wife, Sarah Choate Sears.

[4] The Sears Building was completed in June 1891 at a cost $18,000 (equivalent to $610,000 in 2023), at the time the most expensive being built in Kirkland outside of the steel mill itself.

Originally intended to house a bank at the corner, Sears outfitted the entire interior and even hired a partial staff but with the arrival of the Panic of 1893, the doors, like the steel mill, never opened.