The building was built as an investment property by Josiah Carpenter and Nehemiah Bean, prominent local businessmen and real estate developers. The land originally belonged to the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, and was sold to Carpenter and Bean with the constraint that construction be of brick. It was designed by John T. Fanning, a prominent local architect with a number of significant regional industrial and residential commissions. It is his only known example of a tenement house. The building underwent a certified historic rehabilitation in 2001.
