Located at the corner of School and Washington Streets, the gambrel-style brick building is Boston's oldest commercial establishment. The current structure was built in 1718 as a mixed use property, with various pharmacists operating apothecaries on the first floor and using the second floor as their private residences. It was over a century before the historic landmark's first bookshop, "Publishers, Booksellers and Stationers / Carter, Hendee & Co.," was opened by bookseller Timothy Harrington Carter, along with his brother, Richard, and partner, Charles J. Hendee.
In 1832, Carter sold the property to John Allen & William D. Ticknor, who initially operated the business as Ticknor and Allen. A year later, Allen withdrew from the firm, and Ticknor continued business under William D. Ticknor and Company. James T. Fields, who started in the business as an apprentice, was made partner in 1845, along with John Reed; the business imprint became Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. When Reed retired in 1854, the company operated as Ticknor and Fields Publishing for the next decade.
Ticknor and Fields was one of the most important publishing companies in the United States. As a result, the Old Corner Bookstore soon became known as "The Saturday Club" to prominent authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Tennyson, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ticknor and Fields also published prestigious literary journals such as the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly.
Following the death of William Ticknor, Fields sold the building to the bookseller E.P. Dutton and moved his publishing business to Tremont Street. Fields' company, Fields, Osgood, & Co., eventually became part of current-day Houghton Mifflin. E.P. Dutton later moved his headquarters to New York City and entered the book publishing business. Today, his company is an imprint of Penguin Random House.