Located on West Street just south of the World Trade Center, the building was designed by Cass Gilbert, with Gunvald Aus and Burt Harrison as structural engineers, and John Peirce as general contractor.

Following the collapse of the adjacent World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001, attacks, the West Street Building was severely damaged.

[11] By the 1980s, Battery Park City was built on filled land along the shore of the river,[12] cutting off the West Street Building from a view of the waterfront.

[16][17] In an article for the Engineering News-Record, he wrote that in general, "architectural beauty, judged even from an economic standpoint, has an income-bearing value".

[16][20] Furthermore, in his initial plans, Gilbert wanted to create a five-story tower that rose from the center of the structure, topping the height of the Flatiron Building.

[21][22][23] This five-story tower was canceled by Carroll, presumably to save money,[20][21] but the idea inspired the seven-story upper section of the building, topped by a mansard roof.

[16][20] At the time of the West Street Building's construction, the facades of many 19th-century early skyscrapers consisted of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital.

On the upper stories, the facade consists mostly of beige terracotta tiles manufactured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company.

Due to the varying loads carried by each column, their sizes ranged from 4 to 12 feet (1.2 to 3.7 m) square, composed of clusters of between 4 and 25 piles.

[42] The foundation work proceeded at an average depth of 18 feet (5.5 m) below the Hudson River's mean high water, requiring extensive waterproofing.

[25][26] Following a 2005 renovation, the building has five elevators on the east wall of the lobby, opposite the West Street entrance, and are arranged in an arc.

[45] While the retail spaces' original finishes were burned and removed after the September 11 attacks, they received new concrete floors and gypsum ceilings and wall panels during the 2005 renovation.

The company, headquartered in the Broadway–Chambers Building, was led by Howard Carroll[52][9][17] and co-founded by John Peirce, Walter Roberts, and Judge S. P.

[14] The adjacent buildings on West Street contained warehouses and other facilities dedicated toward the railroad and steamship industries.

[8][9] Gunvald Aus and Burt Harrison were commissioned as the structural engineers while John Peirce was retained as the general contractor.

[14] Architecture professor Sharon Irish identified "fourteen preliminary sketches that include plans, elevations, and perspectives" for the building, varying in their level of detail.

[21] The design had to attract the more than 100,000 ferry passengers that traveled between New Jersey and New York each day, many of whom would visit the building's rooftop.

[9][53] The main tenant was the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, which operated both the nearby Cortlandt Street Ferry Depot as well as Hoboken Terminal across the Hudson River.

[3][66] Further modifications in the mid-20th century resulted in the renovation of the entrances and storefronts, as well as the addition of exterior nighttime lighting and air-conditioning grilles.

[61] The building was severely damaged in the September 11 attacks in 2001, when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed 300 feet (91 m) to the north.

[11][68] This contrasted with the more modern skyscraper at 7 World Trade Center, which suffered similar damage and collapsed on the afternoon of September 11.

[68] Nevertheless, falling steel from the World Trade Center resulted in the destruction of the ground-floor Morton's The Steakhouse franchise.

[61] Following the attacks, a large American flag was flown outside the West Street Building,[71] which became a "symbol of hope" for 9/11 rescuers.

[74] Because of the scale of the destruction, the inner floors were completely renovated, and plastic sheeting was placed across the north facade to cover the damage.

"[16][92] Edwin Blashfield, a painter, wrote a letter to Gilbert to tell him "what a splendid impression your West Street Building makes on one, as one comes up the harbor on the way back from the other side of the Atlantic.

An anonymous writer for the Architectural Record, possibly Schuyler,[3] said that he appreciated the upper stories, as well as the design of the vertical piers and the Gothic ornamentation.

[93] Another writer for the Architectural Record stated in 1909 that the structure was "an aesthetic and technical triumph" and "the work of a master mind.

"[3][95] An unnamed critic in Architecture magazine praised 90 West Street and the Liberty Tower for the use of "a high sloping roof to complete the structure", saying that "this is a more desirable termination than a plain flat deck".

"[3][99] Ada Louise Huxtable, speaking about a proposed Lower Manhattan development district in 1970, said that the area "contains a few gems of substance such as Cass Gilbert's Beaux-Arts Brady Building on West Street.

"[100] Herbert Muschamp wrote in 1998 that, after the much taller World Trade Center was completed in the 1970s, "Contemporary critics evidently found it painful to praise Gilbert's West Street Building" but that the "wedding cake top" of the mansard roof "looks edible".