The building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and consists of a mostly smooth black facade on a trapezoidal plot.

The primary tenant of the building since 2002 is Brown Brothers Harriman, filling a vacancy left after HSBC relocated in 2001.

[4][6] Roger N. Radford, the leader of the team that designed 140 Broadway,[7] stated that many of the tenants he knew were unaware of the building's "funny shape".

[2] 140 Broadway was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in the International Style, with Gordon Bunshaft as the lead on the project.

[13] Roger N. Radford was the design team's leader; Allan Labie was the project manager; Bradley B. Sullivan was the job captain;[7] and James Ruderman was the structural engineer.

[17] Little else was attached to the facade, except for signs with the number 140 on both faces of either southern corner, as well as the name of the Marine Midland Bank on the Broadway and Cedar Street sides.

[23] Initial plans called for a rectangular building with a light-gray, grid-like facade made of concrete or aluminum.

[9] One critic wrote that the previous design had 140 Broadway as "a little brother to [28 Liberty Street] in the same shiny finish", which he said "would have looked like a poor relation.

[11] An entrance to the New York City Subway's Broad Street station existed on the plaza's southeast corner but was removed by 1999.

[23] The sidewalks on all sides of 140 Broadway are 20 feet (6.1 m) wide and are maintained by the New York City Department of Transportation rather than the building's owners, but are sometimes considered part of the plaza.

[37] In 1952, Wolfson began purchasing land on the city block bounded by Cedar, Liberty, and Nassau Streets, and Broadway.

The six plots on the block had been owned by different entities immediately prior to Wolfson's purchase, including The Clearing House, the National Bank of Commerce, and the Guaranty Trust Company (later part of J.P. Morgan & Co.), and had five buildings between nine and nineteen stories tall.

[40] Two months later, Wien withdrew from the project and Helmsley modified the building to have 49 floors, still occupying two-fifths of the block.

[39] The architects submitted a new-building application to the New York City Department of Buildings in early 1964, though minor changes to the plans were made in subsequent months.

[42] The builders endeavored to reduce noise as much as possible: demolition took place only during off-peak hours, and heavy blankets were used to muffle the sound of blasting as well as contain the debris.

[16] Site excavation was completed in the middle of the following year, and construction of the building frame commenced, with 600 workers being employed.

[15] Keeping with the noise-reduction policy of the foundation's excavation, the building utilized a "butt-welded structural frame", which necessitated less time on the noisy processes of bolting and riveting.

[51] The New York Times wrote that 140 Broadway had "attracted the most attention from prospective buyers":[52] although the building was only 59% occupied and required renovations, real estate in the Financial District was highly sought.

Still, the blast moved the file units about a foot, blew out all the windows on that side of the building, and opened a 5-foot (1.5 m) hole in the reinforced concrete floor.

[65] In 1972, Ronald Kaufman made an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the building by hiding an explosive in a bank vault.

[66][67] The building was again damaged in 1974, when Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña detonated a car bomb on the adjacent street.

[69] This prompted an investigation, which found that hundreds of New York City buildings' elevators did not have keys that enabled firefighters to navigate to specific floors.

[43] In 1968, Ada Louise Huxtable of The New York Times described 140 Broadway as "one of the handsomest [skyscrapers] in the city", enhanced by the inclusion of The Cube,[73] and two years later, said that it was the "epitome of nineteen sixties sophisticated architectural elegance" contrasting with the Chamber of Commerce and One Liberty Plaza.

[31][75] Huxtable's successor at the Times, Paul Goldberger, said "the glass curtain wall is dark and refined, it is discreet", and ranked it as SOM's "best" New York City building.

[6] As early as 1996, architect Robert A. M. Stern had suggested that 140 Broadway was a viable candidate for official landmark status.

[29] The 2010 version of the AIA Guide to New York City characterized 140 Broadway as "a taut skin stretched over bare bones".