The Freud café is housed in the former St Paul's Church, a Greek Revival building designed in 1836 by Henry Jones Underwood.

The architect Edward George Bruton added the apse in 1853 and Frederick Charles Eden remodelled the interior in 1908.

[5] The cafe was created by David Freud, a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, who has an interest in buildings and their interaction with people.

In 2015, a new building for the Blavatnik School of Government of Oxford University on the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter site was opened immediately to the south of Freud.

The scheme was opposed by the cafe's owner, David Freud, due to its size and height compared to the church building.