The building was originally ten stories high, including a mansard roof, and measured 260 feet (79 m) tall to its pinnacle.

The granite foundation, masonry, concrete, glass, plastering, tiling and marble work, iron, slate, window shutters, and woodwork were all supplied by different companies.

Other contractors were hired to install the steam heating, elevators, plumbing, gas, light, pneumatic-tube, and speaking-tube systems.

[10] There was a bulletin board on the Nassau Street elevation, which would display major headlines to crowds in City Hall Park.

The main entrance at Nassau Street, at the base of the clock tower, was flanked by large polished Quincy granite columns.

[19][21] The second through eighth stories, as built, were composed mostly of Baltimore front brick in black mortar; granite trimming was used around windows, cornices, and towers.

[12][19] The tenth floor was an attic, no more than 7 feet (2.1 m) tall, and housed the original ventilation equipment, elevator machinery, and water tanks.

[29] The original building's exterior walls were load-bearing, and were comparatively thick at the base, tapering at a rate of 4 inches (100 mm) for every subsequent floor above ground level.

[30] The original ninth story under the mansard roof, with a ceiling of 23 feet (7.0 m),[30] had the editorial, composing, proof, and stereotype rooms of the Tribune.

[7] By the early 1870s, the Tribune had become nationally known, and Greeley was running in the 1872 United States presidential election as the Liberal Republican and Democratic parties' nominee.

[7][40] Greeley died less than a month after his election defeat in November 1872,[40] but plans for the new building proceeded under Tribune chief editor Whitelaw Reid, who pushed for a spacious, fireproof headquarters.

[19][40] Documentation exists of a rejected design by Josiah Cleaveland Cady, first published in 1874, which included several layers of round-arched arcades on the facade as well as a corner campanile.

[7] Demolition of the second Tribune building was accomplished in a two-week span in May 1873,[9][12] and work on the foundation started in early June.

[5] A statue of Horace Greeley by John Quincy Adams Ward was unveiled in front of one of the building's ground-floor windows in 1890.

[47] According to British magazine The Building News, the structure was originally considered "as a piece of folly" with no tenants "who would risk their lives in it", because of the relatively novel nature of the early skyscraper.

[23][50] The other floors contained commercial tenants including the Homer Lee Bank Note Company, a newspaper called The Morning Journal,[51] and the offices of businessman and inventor Charles A.

[52] A saloon took space in the cellar, a fact that the rival New York Times made fun of, given Greeley's opposition to drinking.

[54] In August 1903, the Tribune Association announced that the building would be expanded from ten to nineteen stories, to designs by architects D'Oench & Yost and L. Thouyard.

The original mansard would be removed to make way for the new stories; in conjunction with the project, the clock tower would be taken down and rebuilt atop the new building, and a 19-story annex would be built on Frankfort Street to match the additional floors.

[5] That October, the Tribune acquired the land on Frankfort Street, including a building housing the New York American.

[61][62] At that time, the Tribune had signed a contract to sell its Nassau Street building to S. M. Banner and H. E. Mitler, to take effect in May 1923.

[63] Retired merchant Victor Welchman, along with his partner Alvin S. Harte, leased the building for 21 years in 1922, at an aggregate net rental of $5 million.

Akul thus refused to pay the balance of the purchase price to the Tribune, and the sale was canceled, with the paper continuing to hold the property.

[79] The Tribune Building site was a "block of rubble" by the time construction on 1 Pace Plaza commenced in December 1966.

[11] A farcical 1879 New York Times piece began with the jest that the "mystery of the Tribune building has long baffled the investigations of our most learned archæologists" and proceeded to concoct a series of imaginary histories for the structure, which the article deems "a noble monument of mortgages raised over the property of the Tribune stockholders.

"[82] Montgomery Schuyler, writing for the World, referred to the building as "a glaring collocation of red and white and black, which time can never mellow".

[11] Alfred J. Bloor, a contemporary of Hunt's, described the color contrast of the facade as "too violent" and the general form as "extravagant" because of the bend in the main Nassau Street elevation.

[10] The Real Estate Record and Guide wrote, "A beautiful example of [the mansard's] needless introduction is the new Tribune Building, where the roof is just this extra story too deep.

Bloor stated that, despite the contrast of the facade and the proportions, the Tribune Building was otherwise "one of the most graceful examples extant … by which Neo-Grec lines are infused with Gothic sentiment".

[88][89] The critic Winston Weisman stated that the Tribune Building was intended as a pioneering skyscraper, saying, "The total effect of the design is not elegant.