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Residential skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

The West Street Building is 324 feet (99 m) tall and contains 23 above ground floors. It was designed by Cass Gilbert, who had designed numerous public structures and government buildings in the Beaux Arts style. From the start, Gilbert intended the West Street Building as "a machine that makes the land pay". The West Street Building was one of the first skyscrapers to consistently use neo Gothic style decoration. At the time, it was still relatively rare for a steel skeleton skyscraper to contain terracotta cladding, as the West Street Building did. 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. This five story tower was canceled by Carroll, presumably to save money, This contrasted with Gilbert's later skyscraper designs, which tended toward a "romantic tower" style. The terracotta facade is highlighted by red, green, blue, and gold tiles. To comply with the building laws of the 1900s, which required buildings over 100 feet (30 m) to be able to withstand of wind pressure, the West Street Building's steel superstructure was braced to protect against wind gusts. The curtain walls on the exterior were reinforced by hollow brick, while portal bracing was used for the steel frame. The lower floors occupy the whole parallelogram shaped lot, while the upper floors contain a C shaped floor plan, with a small "light court" facing east toward the middle of the block.

The base is three stories tall and clad with Fox Island granite. There are segmental arches at ground level, The Cedar Street side has an offset arched entrance that is similar to the West Street entrance, with signage saying 140 cedar st, while the Albany Street side has a driveway that leads down into a basement garage. On all three sides, the remaining arches are double height and contain wood, aluminum, or cast iron storefronts. The third story is designed as a transitional story with a cornice above the top. Between the window openings in each bay, there are granite panels, as well as foliated bosses at each corner of the window openings. The outermost bays contain one window each and are framed by more elaborate surrounds, while all the other bays contain two windows each. There are marble panels below the cornice, and single story engaged columns at each corner of the building.

The shaft comprises the fourth through sixteenth stories. As with the base, the outer window bays consist of one window per floor, and the inner bays contain two windows per floor. A cornice runs above the 16th floor. The crown comprises the 17th through 20th floors. The 17th through 19th floors are designed as a triple height arcade. The spandrels between the floors are decorated with multicolored floral motifs, while there is another ornate cornice above the 19th floor. The top three stories consist of a copper clad mansard roof. The dormers, as well as decorative tourelles, added to the aesthetic of the building when it was originally viewed from the waterfront. The ground above the bedrock was composed of of clay directly above, then a layer of sand, and finally 20 feet (6 m) of mud and silt at ground level. Construction was further hindered by the difficulties in constructing caissons due to the frequent fires and air pressure related injuries associated with such structures. The foundation consisted of pilings that descended at least 25 feet (8 m), except at the boiler room where they descended 18 feet (5 m). Seventy four columns were drilled down to the rock. Due to the varying loads carried by each column, their sizes ranged from square, composed of clusters of between 4 and 25 piles. Additionally, in the layer of concrete above the piles, there was a series of I beams that was encased in the concrete. Since the boundaries of the lot did not intersect at right angles, the columns carried varying weight distributions. The foundation work proceeded at an average depth of 18 feet (5 m) below the Hudson River's mean high water, requiring extensive waterproofing. This contract was outsourced to the Sicilian Asphalt Paving Company, one of Carroll's companies.

The lobby contains two corridors arranged in a "T" shape. One leads south from the Cedar Street entrance while the other extends east from the main entrance on West Street, terminating at the north south corridor. The retail areas themselves were configured with entrances to the street and to the lobby, but did not have interior partitions. As built, there were nine "plunger elevators", five of which could operate at the same time. All elevators served the upper stories. The floors could be arranged to allow a myriad of office layouts. Radiators were placed underneath each window, with heat provided by a system of low pressure exhaust pipes, since the site could be subject to heat losses on windy days. Originally, there was no artificial ventilation except in part of the basement. These included the United States Express Building (2 Rector Street), the Singer Building, and the Old New York Evening Post Building, which were under construction in the middle of that decade. and co founded by John Peirce, Walter Roberts, and Judge S. P. McConnell. The West Street Improvement Company sought to erect an office structure particularly for the shipping interests along the Hudson River, the shoreline of which was located at West Street during the early 1900s. They selected a site between Albany and Cedar Streets with a lot length of 159 feet (48 m) facing West Street. The building's construction started in April 1906 and the structure was finished the next year. This led to the building being nicknamed the "Railroad and Iron Exchange Building" and alternatively as the "Coal and Iron Building". The top floor was occupied by Garret's Restaurant, which was touted as the "world's highest restaurant" and was later characterized as the forerunner to World Trade Center's Windows on the World restaurant. As partial payment, ASR sold some property in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, and the West Street Building subsequently became the Brady Building. 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. The "Brady Building" name persisted over several years, despite being sold multiple times through the end of the 20th century. The lobby was renovated in the 1960s and 1980s, which led to the removal of many of the original finishes. However, the interior was not similarly designated, which left it open to future modification. Two office workers were killed when they were trapped in an elevator by falling debris. A firestorm continued for several days; the interior light court functioned as a chimney, causing further damage to the interior. The West Street Building's heavy building materials and extensive use of terracotta may have helped serve as fireproofing and protected it from further damage and collapse. which became a "symbol of hope" for 9/11 rescuers.

The building was sold in January 2003 to Brack Capital Real Estate, which wished to turn 90 West Street into a residential building. Brack Capital formed a limited liability company, Brack 90 West Street, to oversee the conversion, then sold a half share in the company to BD Hotels and the Kibel Company. 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. The December 2003 nor'easter tore open a portion of the sheeting, which was then removed. A parking garage was also built in the building's basement. The interior was converted into apartments and reopened in mid 2005 as 90 West Street, a 410 unit residential building. The next year, it received a National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 90 West Street was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 25, 2007. The designation included the exterior and part of the interior. The building was slightly damaged in November 2007, when a large sewer pipe from the World Trade Center site burst open and flooded the basement, causing a two week evacuation of the building. The operators of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum proposed in 2011 to use 90 West Street as a security screening site for museum visitors, which was controversial among the building's residents. Despite this, 90 West Street ended up being utilized as a visitors' center for people traveling to the memorial. During residential conversion, the building had received a 421 g tax exemption, meant for developers converting Lower Manhattan buildings to residential use, and as such, some of the residential units were rent stabilized. Tenants of 90 West Street filed a lawsuit in the mid 2010s, stating that the building's owner, the Kibel Company, had wrongfully eliminated rent regulation for the building's residential units. In 2019, the New York Supreme Court ruled in the tenants' favor, since the owner had received benefits under the 421 g tax incentive program, and was thus bound to provide stabilized leases for the tenants. The next year, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Kibel only owed rent stabilized tenants four years of back rent, instead of the six years provided in the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019.

Upon its opening, the West Street Building was lauded by other architects and artists. John Merven Carrère, a partner in the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings, said to Gilbert that "I think it is the most successful building of its class." 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." Architectural critics approved of the building's design as well. An anonymous writer for the Architectural Record, possibly Schuyler, 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." In 1912, a writer for the Architectural Review said that the use of ornament and the expression of the building's design "account for the excellence of effect of the West Street Building." 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". Further, The New York Times praised the use of multicolored ornamentation on 90 West Street's facade. Praise for the West Street Building continued even through later years, such as a 1934 article which called the structure among the city's "most satisfying buildings." 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." 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". The National Park Service, in its 2007 historic designation report, stated that in addition to 90 West Street's importance as one of the first skyscrapers to consistently use of Gothic detailing, the structure "acquired additional historical importance as a witness to and survivor of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."