Nyhavn 18 was built in c. 1770 for merchant and shipowner Andreas Bodenhoff and he lived there from when he was 62 years old as the building's first owner.

Jonathan Balling, who worked for the Royal Greenland Trade Department, lived in the building until his death in 1829.

The writer Andreas Nicolai de Saint-Aubain, who used the pseudonym Carl Bernhard, was a resident in the building from 1832 to 1865.

At the time of the 1850 census, he lived on the ground floor of the building with bhis wife Inger Kirstine (Stine) Unger (née Møller), their five children (aged five to 20) and one maid.

Hans Christian Andersen was a lodger on the first floor from 23 October 1871, renting three rooms from Thora Hallager, a former photographer who now ran a boarding home at the address.

On 1 July, Andersen moved in with the Melchior family in their summer residence Rolighed where he died on 4 August.

Two of Andersen's friends, Matthias Weber and Erik Lassen, who both studied theology, lived on the second floor.

The painter Wenzel Tornøe (1844–1907) resided on the fourth floor with his wife Karen Elisabeth Torno, their two-year-old daughter and one maid.

Erik Møller Architects were commissioned to adapt the building for use as residences for foreign artists and scientists.

Eril Møller Arkitekter replaced the mansard roof with dormers from the 1840s expansion with a recessed fifth floor with glazed frontage.