This very handsome cast-iron structure was erected in 1887 as the Hugh O’Neill Dry Goods Building and is one of the highlights of the city’s "Ladies Mile" retail stretch along the Avenue of the Americas south of 23rd Street that flourished at the end of the 19th Century.

Designed by Mortimer C. Merritt, it originally had tall, beehive-style domes atop the almost cylindrical towers at the corners of 20th and 21st Streets. The domes were eventually removed but its conversion to 49 condominium apartments, completed in 2007, included their restoration.

The building’s name is emblazoned in relief on its pediment.

It is the oldest and most handsome of the major department store buildings along Ladies’ Mile and was complemented in scale and grandeur by the Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods Store at 616-632 Avenue of the Americas, which was designed by DeLemos & Cordes and erected in 1897, and by the Simpson Crawford & Simpson dry goods store at 641 Avenue of the Americas, which was designed by William H. Hume & Son and erected in 1900.

This building has a five-story base topped by a one-story pediment story in the center of the frontage along the avenue.

In an article in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that the building originally had four floors and that the fifth story was added in 1895, adding that "in 1906, the O’Neill store merged with Adams Dry Goods, a one-time competitor on the block to the north....But the merged company closed in 1907, as garment-manufacturing firms...