[6] The building's first use as a bookstore dates to 1828, when Timothy Harrington Carter leased the space, whose address had now changed to 135 Washington Street, from a man named George Brimmer.

Carter spent $7,000 renovating the building's commercial space, including the addition of projecting, small-paned windows on the ground floor.

For part of the 19th century, the firm was one of the most important publishing companies in the United States, and the Old Corner Bookstore became a meeting-place for such authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[7] Ticknor and Fields rented out the whole building, using only the corner for a retail space.

Other sections of the building, particularly upstairs rooms and storefronts facing School Street, were in turn sublet to other businesses.

Then the space was briefly used as a showroom for crafts created by North Bennet Street School students and faculty.